is a Maxim in this Club That the Steward never dies; for as they succeed one another by way of Rotation, no Man is to quit the great Elbow-chair
which
stands at the upper End of the Table, 'till his Successor is in a Readiness to fill it; insomuch that there has not been a
Sede vacante
in the Memory of Man.
Club was instituted towards the End (or, as some of them say, about the Middle) of the Civil Wars, and continued without Interruption till the Time of the
Great Fire