[2] Gilbert set up buildings and a cloister for them against the north wall of the church, which stood on his land at Sempringham, and gave them a rule of life, enjoining upon them chastity, humility, obedience, and charity.

[3] As the serving maids requested that they too might have a dress and rule of life, on the advice of William, abbot of Rievaulx, he decided to add lay sisters to the community.

In 1147 he left England for Continental Europe to seek assistance, and approached the Cistercian Order at its major house in Cîteaux to take on the running of his foundations.

Gilbert returned to England in 1148, and completed the order, by appointing canons, who lived according to variant of the Augustinian rule, to serve his community as priests, and to help him in the work of administration.

[4] The Canons Regular wore a black cassock with a white hooded cloak[5] (lined with lamb's wool)[6] with shoes of red leather.

Towards the end of Gilbert's life, when he was around 90 years old, some of the lay brothers at Sempringham rose up against him,[1] complaining of too much work and too little food.

By the end of the 15th century, the Order was greatly impoverished, and King Henry VI exempted all of its houses from paying taxes and from any other sort of payment.

The Gilbertines were the only purely English order[1] (except for one short-lived house in Scotland), therefore the Dissolution marked their permanent end.

Although the Priory at Sempringham was destroyed, the adjacent and contemporary parish church of St Andrew remains and some evidence of mediaeval decoration is still to be found.

In 2001, British Channel 4 Television's archaeological series Time Team[9][10] excavated a Gilbertine monastery in Chicksands, Bedfordshire.

[13] A Roman Catholic Gilbertine community, The Canons Regular of St Gilbert of Sempringham (GSmp), began in 2017 in Canada within the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.

[15][better source needed][failed verification] The Companions of St Gilbert of Sempringham, which existed alongside the canons regular, not unlike a third order in structure and purpose, will now be the main expression of Gilbertine spirituality resulting from this attempt at a restoration; it had begun as a de facto association of the faithful.

[citation needed] The detective novel, The Beautiful Mystery (2012), by Louise Penny is set in a fictional Gilbertine abbey in rural Quebec.