From the time of Chaucer to the present day, the lawyers have dined together in the antient hall, as the military monks did before them; and the rule of their order requiring "two and two to eat together," and "all the fragments to be given in brotherly charity to the domestics," is observed to this day, and has been in force from time immemorial. The attendants at table, moreover, are still called _paniers_, as in the days of the Knights Templars.[571] The leading punishments of the Temple, too, remain the same as in the olden time. The antient Templar, for example, for a light fault, was "withdrawn from the companionship of his fellows," and not allowed "to eat with them at the same table,"[572] and the modern Templar, for impropriety of conduct, is "expelled the hall" and "put out of commons." The brethren of the antient fraternity were, for grave offences, in addition to the above punishment, deprived of their lodgings,[573] and were compelled to sleep with the beasts in the open court; and the members of the modern fellowship have in bygone times, as a mode of punishment, been temporarily deprived of their chambers in the Temple for misconduct, and padlocks have been put upon the doors. The Master and Chapter of the Temple, in the time of the Knights Templars, exercised the power of imprisonment and expulsion from the fellowship, and the same punishments have been freely used down to a recent period by the Masters of the Bench of the modern societies. Until of late years, too, the modern Templars have had their readers, officers of great dignity, whose duty it has been to read and expound LAW in the hall, at and after meals, in the same way as the readers of the Knights Templars read and expounded RELIGION.
There has also been, in connexion with the modern fellowship, a class of _associates_ similar to the associates of the antient Templars.[574] These were illustrious persons who paid large sums of money, and made presents of plate, to be admitted to the fellowship of the Masters of the Bench; they were allowed to dine at the Bench table, to be as it were honorary members of the society, but were freed from the ordinary exercises and regulations of the house, and had at the same time no voice in the government thereof.