midnight
The famous Medmenham monks , or `` Hell Fire Club , '' as they were commonly called , and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member , were a fraternity whose motto was `` Do as you please , '' and that invitation still stands over the ruined doorway of the abbey . Many years before this bogus abbey , with its congregation of irreverent jesters , was founded , there stood upon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind , whose monks were of a somewhat different type to the revellers that were to follow them , five hundred years afterwards . The Cistercian monks , whose abbey stood there in the thirteenth century , wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls , and ate no flesh , nor fish , nor eggs . They lay upon straw , and they rose at midnight to mass . They spent the day in labour , reading , and prayer ; and over all their lives there fell a silence as of death , for no one spoke . A grim fraternity , passing grim lives in that sweet spot , that God had made so bright ! Strange that Nature 's voices all around them -- the soft singing of the waters , the whisperings of the river grass , the music of the rushing wind -- should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this .