CHAPTER XIV.
THE TEMPLE CHURCH AND PRECINCT.
The Temple Church—Its Restorations—Discoveries of Antiquities—The Penitential Cell—Discipline in the Temple—The Tombs of the Templars
in the "Round"—William and Gilbert Marshall—Stone Coffins in the Churchyard—Masters of the Temple—The "Judicious" Hooker—Edmund Gibbon, the Historian—The Organ in the Temple Church—The Rival Builders—"Straw Bail"—History of the Precinct—Chaucer
and the Friar—His Mention of the Temple—The Serjeants—Erection of New Buildings—The "Roses"—Sumptuary Edicts—The Flying
Horse.
The round church of the Temple is the finest of
the four round churches still existing in England.
The Templars did not, however, always build round
towers, resembling the Temple at Jerusalem, though
such was generally their practice. The restoration
of this beautiful relic was one of the first symptoms
of the modern Gothic revival.
In the reign of Charles II. the body of the
church was filled with formal pews, which concealed the bases of the columns, while the walls
were encumbered, to the height of eight feet
from the ground, with oak wainscoting, which was
carried entirely round the church, so as to hide the
elegant marble piscina, the interesting almeries over
the high altar, and the sacrarium on the eastern
side of the edifice. The elegant Gothic arches
connecting the round with the square church were
choked up with an oak screen and glass windows
and doors, and with an organ gallery adorned with
Corinthian columns, pilasters, and Grecian ornaments, which divided the building into two parts,
altogether altered its original character and appearance, and sadly marring its architectural beauty.
The eastern end of the church was at the same
time disfigured by an enormous altar-piece in the
classic style, decorated with Corinthian columns and
Grecian cornices and entablatures, and with enrichments of cherubims and wreaths of fruit, flowers,
and leaves, heavy and cumbrous, and quite at variance
with the Gothic character of
the building. A large pulpit
and carved sounding-board
were erected in the middle of
the dome, and the walls and
whinns were encrusted and
disfigured with hideous mural
monuments and pagan trophies of forgotten wealth and
vanity.
A KNIGHT TEMPLAR.
The following account of
the earliest repairs of the
Temple Church is given in
"The New View of London":
"Having narrowly escaped
the flames in 1666, it was
in 1682 beautified, and the
curious wainscot screen set
up. The south-west part
was, in the year 1695, new
built with stone. In the year
1706 the church was wholly
new whitewashed, gilt, and
painted within, and the pillars
of the round tower wainscoted
with a new battlement and
buttresses on the south side,
and other parts of the outside were well repaired. Also
the figures of the Knights
Templars were cleaned and
painted, and the iron-work
enclosing them new painted
and gilt with gold. The east
end of the church was repaired and beautified in
1707." In 1737 the exterior of the north side
and east end were again repaired.
The first step towards the real restoration of
the Temple Church was made in 1825. It had
been generally repaired in 1811, but in 1825 Sir
Robert Smirke restored the whole south side externally and the lower part of the circular portion
of the round church. The stone seat was renewed,
the arcade was restored, the heads which had
been defaced or removed were supplied. The wainscoting of the columns was taken away, the monuments affixed to some of the columns were removed,
and the position of others altered. There still remained, however, monuments in the round church
materially affecting the relative proportions of the two
circles; the clustered columns still retained their
incrustations of paint, plaster, and whitewash; the
three archway entrances into the oblong church remained in their former state,
detaching the two portions
from each other, and entirely
destroying the perspective
which those arches afforded.
When the genuine restoration was commenced in 1845,
the removal of the beautifications and adornments which
had so long disfigured the
Temple Church, was regarded
as an act of vandalism. Seats
were substituted for pews,
and a smaller pulpit and reading-desk supplied more appropriate to the character of
the building. The pavement
was lowered to its original
level; and thus the bases of
the columns became once
more visible. The altar screen
and railing were taken down.
The organ was removed, and
thus all the arches from the
round church to the body
of the oblong church were
thrown open. By this alteration the character of the
church was shown in its original beauty.
In the summer of 1840, the
two Societies of the Inner and
Middle Temple had the paint
and whitewash scraped off the
marble columns and ceiling.
The removal of the modern
oak wainscoting led to the discovery of a very
beautiful double marble piscina near the east end
of the south side of the building, together with
an adjoining elegantly-shaped recess, and also a
picturesque Gothic niche on the north side of the
church.
On taking up the modern floor, remains of
the original tesselated pavement were discovered.
When the whitewash and plaster were removed from
the ceiling it was found in a dangerous condition.
There were also found were remains of ancient
decorative paintings and rich ornaments worked in
gold and silver; but they were too fragmentary to
give an idea of the general pattern. Under these
circumstances it was resolved to redecorate the
ceiling in a style corresponding with the ancient
decorative paintings observable in many Gothic
churches in Italy and France.
INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH (see page 150).
As the plaster and whitewash were removed it
was found that the columns were of the most beautiful Purbeck marble. The six elegant clustered
columns in the round tower had been concealed
with a thick coating of Roman cement, which had
altogether concealed the graceful form of the
mouldings and carved foliage of their capitals.
Barbarous slabs of Portland stone had been cased
round their bases and entirely altered their character.
All this modern patchwork was thrown away; but
the venerable marble proved so mutilated that new
columns were found necessary to support the fabric.
These are exact imitations of the old ones. The
six elegant clustered columns already alluded to,
however, needed but slight repair. Almost all the
other marble-work required renewal, and a special
messenger was despatched to Purbeck to open the
ancient quarries.
Above the western doorway was discovered
a beautiful Norman window, composed of Caen
stone. The porch before the western door of the
Temple Church, which formerly communicated
with an ancient cloister leading to the hall of the
Knights Templars, had been filled up with rubbish
to a height of nearly two feet above the level of the
ancient pavement, so that all the bases of the
magnificent Norman doorway were entirely hidden
from view.
Previous to the recent restoration the round
tower was surmounted by a wooden, flat, whitewashed ceiling, altogether different from the ancient
roof. This ceiling and the timber roof above it
have been entirely removed, and replaced by the
present elegant and substantial roof, which is composed of oak, protected externally by sheet copper,
and has been painted by Mr. Willement in accordance with an existing example of decorative painting
in an ancient church in Sicily. Many buildings
were also removed to give a clearer view of the
fine old church.
"Among the many interesting objects," says
Mr. Addison, "to be seen in the ancient church of
the Knights Templars is a penitential cell, a dreary
place of solitary confinement formed within the
thick wall of the building, only four feet six inches
long and two feet six inches wide, so narrow and
small that a grown person cannot lie down within
it. In this narrow prison the disobedient brethren
of the ancient Templars were temporarily confined
in chains and fetters, 'in order that their souls
might be saved from the eternal prison of hell.'
The hinges and catch of a door, firmly attached to
the doorway of this dreary chamber, still remain,
and at the bottom of the staircase is a stone recess
or cupboard, where bread and water were placed
for the prisoner. In this cell Brother Walter le
Bacheler, Knight, and Grand Preceptor of Ireland, is
said to have been starved to death for disobedience
to his superior, the Master of the Temple. His
body was removed at daybreak and buried by
Brother John de Stoke and Brother Radulph de
Barton in the middle of the court between the
church and the hall."
The Temple discipline in the early times was very
severe: disobedient brethren were scourged by the
Master himself in the Temple Church, and frequently whipped publicly on Fridays in the church.
Adam de Valaincourt, a deserter, was sentenced to
eat meat with the dogs for a whole year, to fast
four days in the week, and every Monday to
present himself naked at the high altar to be
publicly scourged by the officiating priest.
At the time of the restoration of the church
stained glass windows were added, and the panels
of the circular vaulting were emblazoned with the
lamb and horse—the devices of the Inner and
Middle Temple—and the Beauseant, or black and
white banner of the Templars.
The mail-clad effigies on the pavement of the
"Round" of the Temple Church are not monuments of Knights Templars, but of "Associates of
the Temple," persons only partially admitted to the
privileges of the powerful Order. During the last
repairs there were found two Norman stone coffins
and four ornamented leaden coffins in small vaults
beneath these effigies, but not in their original
positions. Stow, in 1598, speaks of eight images
of armed knights in the round walk. The effigies
have been restored by Mr. Richardson, the sculptor.
The most interesting of these represents Geoffrey
de Magnaville, Earl of Essex, a bold baron, who
fought against King Stephen, sacked Cambridge,
and plundered Ramsey Abbey. He was excommunicated, and while besieging Burwell Castle was
struck by an arrow from a crossbow just as he had
taken off his helmet to get air. The Templars,
not daring to bury him, soldered him up in lead,
and hung him on a crooked tree in their riverside orchard. The corpse being at last absolved,
the Templars buried it before the west door of their
church. He is to be known by a long, pointed
shield charged with rays on a diamonded field.
The next figure, of Purbeck marble in low relief,
is supposed to be the most ancient of all. The
shield is kite-shaped, the armour composed of
rude rings—name unknown. Vestiges of gilding
were discovered upon this monument. The two
effigies on the north-east of the "Round" are
also anonymous. They are the tallest of all the
stone brethren: one of them is straight-legged; the
crossed legs of his comrade denote a Crusading
vow. The feet of the first rests on two grotesque
human heads, probably Infidels; the second
wears a mouth guard like a respirator. Between
the two figures is the copestone lid of an ancient
sarcophagus, probably that of a Master or VisitorGeneral of the Templars, as it has the head of the
cross which decorates it adorned with a lion's head,
and the foot rests on the head of a lamb, the joint
emblems of the Order of the Templars. During
the excavations in the "Round," a magnificent
Purbeck marble sarcophagus, the lid decorated
with a foliated cross, was dug up and re-interred.
On the south side of the "Round," between two
columns, his feet resting upon a lion, reposes a
great historical personage, William Marshall, the
Protector of England during the minority of
King Henry III., a warrior and a statesman
whose name is sullied by no crimes. The features
are handsome, and the whole body is wrapped in
chain mail. A Crusader in early life, the earl
became one of Richard Cæur de Lion's vicegerents during his absence in Palestine. He
fought in Normandy for King John, helped in the
capture of Prince Arthur and his sister, urged the
usurper to sign Magna Charta, and secured the
throne for Prince Henry. Finally, he defeated the
French invaders, routed the French at sea, and
died, in the fulness of years, a warrior whose
deeds had been notable, a statesman whose motives
could seldom be impugned. Shakespeare, with
ever a keen eye for great men, makes the earl the
interceder for Prince Arthur. He was a great
benefactor of the brethren of the Chivalry of the
Temple.
By the side of the earl reposes his warlike son
William Marshall the younger, cut in freestone. He
was one of the chief leaders of the Barons against
John, and in Henry's reign he overthrew Prince
Llewellyn, and slew 8,000 wild Welsh. He fought
with credit in Brittany and Ireland, and eventually
married Eleanor, the king's sister. He gave an
estate to the Templars. The effigy is clad in a
shirt of ring mail, above which is a loose garment,
girded at the waist. The shield on the left arm
bears a lion rampant.
Near the western doorway reclines the mailed
effigy of Gilbert Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, third
son of the Protector. He is in the act of drawing
a sword, and his left foot rests on a winged dragon.
This earl, at the murder of a brother in Ireland,
succeeded to the title, and married Margaret, a
daughter of the King of Scotland. He was just
starting for the Crusades, when he was killed by a
fall from his horse, in a tournament held at Ware,
(1241). Like the other Marshalls, he was a benefactor of the Temple, and, like all the four sons of
the Protector, died without issue, in the reign of
Henry III., the family becoming extinct with
him. Matthew Paris declared that the race had
been cursed by the Bishop of Fernes, from whom
the Protector had stolen lands. The bishop,
says the chronicler, with great awe came with King
Henry to the Temple Church, and, standing at the
earl's tomb, promised the dead man absolution if
the lands were returned. No restitution was made,
so the curse fell on the doomed race. All these
Pembrokes wear chain hoods and have animals
recumbent at their feet.
The name of a beautiful recumbent mailed figure
next Gilbert Marshall is unknown, and near him,
on the south side of the "Round," rests the everpraying effigy of Robert, Lord de Ros. This
lord was no Templar, for he has no beard,
and wears flowing hair, contrary to the rules
of the Order. His shield bears three water
buckets. The figure is cut out of yellow Roach
Abbey stone. The armour is linked. This knight
was fined £800 by Richard Cœur de Lion for
allowing a French prisoner of consequence to
escape from his custody. He married a daughter
of a King of Scotland, was Sheriff of Cumberland,
helped to extort Magna Charta from King John,
and gave much public property to the Templars.
During the repairs of the round tower several
sarcophagi of Purbeck marble were discovered.
On the coffins being removed while the tower
was being propped, the bodies all crumbled to
dust. The sarcophagi were all reinterred in the
centre of the "Round."
During the repairs of 1850 the workmen discovered and stole an ancient seal of the Order; it
had the name of Berengarius, and on one side was
represented the Holy Sepulchre. "The churchyard
abounds," Mr. Addison says, "with ancient stone
coffins. According to Burton, an antiquary of
Elizabeth's time, there then existed in the Temple
Church a monument to a Visitor-General of the
Order. Among other distinguished persons buried
in the Temple Church, for so many ages a place of
special sanctity, was William Plantagenet, fifth son
of Henry III., who died when a youth. Henry III.
himself, had at one time resolved to be buried "with
the brethren of the Chivalry of the Temple, expecting and hoping that, through our Lord and
Saviour, it will greatly contribute to the salvation
of our soul." Queen Eleanor also provided for her
interment in the Temple, but it was otherwise
decreed.
In the triforium of the Temple Church have been
packed away, like lumber, the greater part of the
clumsy monuments that once disfigured the walls
and columns below. In this strange museum lord
chancellors, councillors of state, learned benchers,
barons of the exchequer, masters of the rolls, treasurers, readers, prothonotaries, poets, and authors
jostle each other in dusty confusion. At the entrance, under a canopy, is the recumbent figure of
the great lawyer of Elizabeth's time, Edmund
Plowden. This grave and wise man, being a
staunch Romanist, was slighted by the Protestant
Queen. It is said that he was so studious in his
youth that at one period he never went out of the
Temple precincts for three whole years. He was
Treasurer of the Middle Temple the year the hall
was built.
Selden (that great writer on international law,
whose "Mare clausum" was a reply to the "Mare
liberum" of Grotius) is buried to the left of the
altar, the spot being marked by a monument of white
marble. "His grave," says Aubrey, "was about
ten feet deepe or better, walled up a good way with
bricks, of which also the bottome was paved, but
the sides at the bottome for about two foot high were
of black polished marble, wherein his coffin (covered
with black bayes) lyeth, and upon that wall of
marble was presently lett downe a huge black
marble stone of great thicknesse, with this inscription—'Hic jacet corpus Johannis Seldeni, qui
obijt 30 die Novembris, 1654.' Over this was
turned an arch of brick (for the house would not
lose their ground), and upon that was throwne the
earth," &c.
There is a monument in the triforium to Edmund Gibbon, a herald and an ancestor of the historian. The great writer alluding to this monment
says—"My family arms are the same which were
borne by the Gibbons of Kent, in an age when the
College of Heralds religiously guarded the distinctions of blood and name—a lion rampant gardant
between three schollop shells argent, on a field
azure. I should not, however, have been tempted
to blazon my coat of arms were it not connected
with a whimsical anecdote. About the reign of
James I., the three harmless schollop shells were
changed by Edmund Gibbon, Esq., into three
ogresses, or female cannibals, with a design of
stigmatising three ladies, his kinswomen, who had
provoked him by an unjust lawsuit. But this
singular mode of revenge, for which he obtained
the sanction of Sir William Seager, King-at-Arms,
soon expired with its author; and on his own
monument in the Temple Church the monsters
vanish, and the three schollop shells resume their
proper and hereditary place."
At the latter end of Charles II.'s reign the organ in
the Temple Church became the subject of a singular
contest, which was decided by a most remarkable
judge. The benchers had determined to have the
best organ in London; the competitors for the building were Smith and Harris. Father Smith, a German,
was renowned for his care in choosing wood without
knot or flaw, and for throwing aside every metal
or wooden pipe that was not perfect and sound.
His stops were also allowed by all to be singularly
equal and sweet in tone. The two competitors
were each to erect an organ in the Temple Church,
and the best one was to be retained. The competition was carried on with such violence that
some of the partisans almost ruined themselves by
the money they expended. The night preceding
the trial the too zealous friends of Harris cut the
bellows of Smith's organ, and rendered it for the
time useless. Drs. Blow and Purcell were employed
to show the powers of Smith's instrument, and
the French organist of Queen Catherine performed
on Harris's. The contest continued, with varying
success, for nearly a twelvemonth. At length
Harris challenged his redoubtable rival to make
certain additional reed stops, vox humana, cremona,
double bassoon and other stops, within a given
time. The controversy was at last terminated by
Lord Chief Justice Jefferies—the cruel and debauched Jefferies, who was himself an accomplished musician—deciding in favour of Father
Smith. Part of Harris's rejected organ was erected
at St. Andrew's, Holborn, part at Christ Church
Cathedral, Dublin. Father Smith, in consequence
of his success at the Temple, was employed to
build an organ for St. Paul's, but Sir Christopher
Wren would never allow the case to be made large
enough to receive all the stops. "The sound and
general mechanism of modern instruments," says
Mr. Burge, "are certainly superior to those of Father
Smith's, but for sweetness of tone I have never
met in any part of Europe with pipes that have
equalled his."
In the reign of James I. there was a great dispute
between the Custos of the Temple and the two
Societies. This sinecure office, the gift of the
Crown, was a rectory without tithes, and the Custos
was dependent upon voluntary contributions. The
benchers, irritated at Dr. Micklethwaite's arrogant
pretensions, shut the doctor out from their dinners.
In the reign of Charles I., the doctor complained to
the king that he received no tithes, was refused
precedence as Master of the Temple, was allowed
no share in the deliberations, was not paid for his
supernumerary sermons, and was denied ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The doctor thereupon locked
up the church and took away the keys; but Noy,
the Attorney-General, snubbed him, and called
him "elatus et superbus;" and he got nothing,
after all, but hard words, for his petition.
The learned and judicious Hooker, author of
"The Ecclesiastical Polity," was for six years Master
of the Temple—"a place," says Izaak Walton,
"which he accepted rather than desired." Travers,
a disciple of Cartwright the Noncomforn ist, was the
lecturer; so Hooker, it was said, preached Canterbury in the forenoon, and Travers Geneva in the
afternoon. The benchers were divided, and Travers
being at last silenced by the archbishop, Hooker
resigned, and in his quiet parsonage of Boscombe
renewed the contest in print, in his "Ecclesiastical
Polity."
When Bishop Sherlock, was Master of the Temple,
the sees of Canterbury and London were vacant
about the same time (1748); this occasioned an
epigram upon Sherlock,—
"At the Temple one day, Sherlock taking a boat,
The waterman asked him, 'Which way will you float?'
'Which way?' says the Doctor; 'why, fool, with the stream!'
To St. Paul's or to Lambeth was all one to him."
The tide in favour of Sherlock was running to
St. Paul's. He was made Bishop of London.
During the repairs of 1827 the ancient freestone
chapel of St. Anne, which stood on the south side
of the "Round," was ruthlessly removed. We had
less reverence for antiquity then. The upper storey
communicated with the Temple Church by a staircase opening on the west end of the south aisle of
the choir; the lower joined the "Round" by a doorway under one of the arches of the circular arcade.
The chapel anciently opened upon the cloisters,
and formed a private way from the convent to the
church. Here the Papal legate and the highest
bishops frequently held conferences; and on Sunday
mornings the Master of the Temple held chapters,
enjoined penances, made up quarrels, and pronounced absolution. The chapel of St. Anne was
in the old time much resorted to by barren women,
who there prayed for children.
In Charles II.'s time, according to "Hudibras,"
"straw bail" and low rascals of that sort lingered
about the Round, waiting for hire. Butler says:—
"Retain all sorts of witnesses
That ply i' the Temple, under trees,
Or walk the Round with Knights o' th' Posts,
About the cross-legg'd knights, their hosts;
Or wait for customers between
The pillar rows in Lincoln's Inn."
In James I.'s time the Round, as we find in Ben
Jonson, was a place for appointments; and in 1681
Otway describes bullies of Alsatia, with flapping
hats pinned up on one side, sandy, weather-beaten
periwigs, and clumsy iron swords clattering at their
heels, as conspicuous personages among the Knights
of the Posts and the other peripatetic philosophers
of the Temple walks.
We must now turn to the history of the whole
precinct. When the proud Order was abolished
by the Pope, Edward II. granted the Temple to
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who, however, soon surrendered it to the king's cousin, the
Earl of Lancaster, who let it, at their special
request, to the students and professors of the common laws; the colony then gradually becoming an
organised and collegiate body, Edward I. having
authorised laymen for the first time to read and
plead causes.
Hugh le Despenser for a time held the Temple,
and on his execution Edward III. appointed the
Mayor of London its guardian. The mayor closing
the watergate caused much vexation to the lawyers
rowing by boat to Westminster, and the king had
to interfere. In 1333 the king farmed out the
Temple rents at £25 a year. In the meantime,
the Knights Hospitallers, affecting to be offended
at the desecration of holy ground—the Bishop
of Ely's lodgings, a chapel dedicated to à Becket,
and the door to the Temple Hall—claimed
the forfeited spot. The king granted their request, the annual revenue of the Temple then
being £73 6s. 11d., equal to about £1,000 of our
present money. In 1340, in consideration of £100
towards an expedition to France, the warlike king
made over the residue of the Temple to the
Hospitallers, who instantly endowed the church
with lands and one thousand fagots a year from
Lillerton Wood to keep up the church fires.
In this reign Chaucer, who is supposed to have
been a student of the Middle Temple, and who
is said to have once beaten an insolent Franciscan
friar in Fleet Street, gives a eulogistic sketch of a
Temple manciple, or purveyor of provisions, in the
prologue to his wonderful "Canterbury Tales."
"A gentil manciple was there of the Temple
Of whom achatours mighten take ensample,
For to ben wise in bying of vitàille;
For, whether that he paid or toke by taille,
Algate he waited so in his achate
That he was aye before in good estate.
Now is not that of God a full fayre grace
That swiche a lewèd mannès wit shall face
The wisdom of an hepe of lerned men ?
"Of maisters had he more than thries ten,
That were of law expert and curious;
Of which there was a dosein in that hous
Worthy to ben stewardes of rent and land
Of any lord that is in Engleland:
To maken him live by his propre good,
In honour detteles; but if he were wood,
Or live as scarsly as him list desire,
And able for to helpen all a shire,
In any cos that mighte fallen or happe:
And yet this manciple sett 'hir aller cappe."
In the Middle Temple Chaucer is supposed to
have formed the acquaintanceship of his graver
contemporary, "the moral Gower."
TOMBS OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS (see page 152).
Many of the old retainers of the Templars became
servants of the new lawyers, who had ousted their
masters. The attendants at table were still called
paniers, as they had formerly been. The dining
in pairs, the expulsion from hall for misconduct,
and the locking out of chambers were old customs
also kept up. The judges of Common Pleas retained the title of knight, and the Fratres Servientes
of the Templars arose again in the character of
learned serjeants-at-law, the coif of the modern
serjeant being the linen coif of the old Freres
Serjens of the Temple. The coif was never, as
some suppose, intended to hide the tonsure of
priests practising law contrary to ecclesiastical prohibition. The old ceremony of creating serjeantsat-law exactly resembles that once used for receiving Fratres Servientes into the fraternity of
the Temple.
In Wat Tyler's rebellion the wild men of Kent
poured down on the dens of the Temple lawyers,
pulled down their houses, carried off the books,
deeds, and rolls of remembrance, and burnt them
in Fleet Street, to spite the Knights Hospitallers.
Walsingham, the chronicler, indeed, says that the
rebels—who, by the by, claimed only their rights—had resolved to decapitate all the lawyers of
London, to put an end to all the laws that had
oppressed them, and to clear the ground for better
times. In the reign of Henry VI. the overgrown
society of the Temple divided into two halls, or
rather the original two halls of the knights and
Fratres Servientes separated into two societies.
Brooke, the Elizabethan antiquary, says: "To this
day, in memory of the old custom, the benchers or
ancients of the one society dine once every year in
the hall of the other society."
Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King's
Bench in the reign of Henry VI., computed the
annual expenses of each law student at more than
£28—("£450 of our present money"—Addison).
The students were all gentlemen by birth, and at
each Inn of Court there was an academy, where
singing, music, and dancing were taught. On
festival days, after the offices of the Church, the
students employed themselves in the study of
history and in reading the Scriptures. Any student
expelled one society was refused admission to any
of the other societies. A manuscript (temp.
Henry VIII.) in the Cotton Library dwells much
on the readings, mootings, boltings, and other
practices of the Temple students, and analyses
the various classes of benchers, readers, cupboardmen, inner barristers, outer barristers, and students.
The writer also mentions the fact that in term
times the students met to talk law and confer on
business in the church, which was, he says, as
noisy as St. Paul's. When the plague broke out
the students went home to the country.
THE TEMPLE IN 1671. (FROM AN OLD BIRD'S-EYE VIEW IN THE INNER TEMPLE.)
The Society of the Inner Temple was very active
(says Mr. Foss) during the reign of Henry VIII.
in the erection of new buildings. Several houses
for chambers were constructed near the library,
and were called Pakington's Rents, from the name
of the treasurer who superintended them. Henry
Bradshaw, treasurer in the twenty-sixth year, gave
his name to another set then built, which it kept
until Chief Baron Tanfield resided there in the
reign of James I., since which it has been called
Tanfield Court. Other improvements were made
about the same period, one of these being the construction of a new ceiling to the hall and the erection of a wall between the garden and the Thames.
The attention paid by the governors of the house
both to the morals and dress of its members is
evidenced by the imposition, in the thirteenth year
of the reign of Henry VIII., of a fine of 6s. 8d.
on any one who should exercise the plays of
"shove-grote" or "slyp-grote," and by the mandate
afterwards issued in the thirty-eighth year of the
same reign, that students should reform themselves
in their cut, or disguised apparel, and should not
have long beards.
It is in the Temple Gardens that Shakespeare—relying, probably, on some old tradition which
does not exist in print—has laid one of the scenes
of his King Henry VI.—that, namely, in which the
partisans of the rival houses of York and Lancaster first assume their distinctive badges of the
white and red roses:—
"Suffolk. Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;
The garden here is more convenient.
* * * *
"Plantagenet. Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
"Somerset. Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.
* * * *
"Plantagenet. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
"Somerset. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
* * * *
"Warwick. This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night."
King Henry VI., Part I., Act ii., sc. 4.
The books of the Middle Temple do not commence till the reign of King Henry VII., the first
treasurer named in them being John Brooke, in the
sixteenth year of Henry VII. (1500-1). Readers
were not appointed till the following year, the
earliest being John Vavasour—probably son of the
judge, and not, as Dugdale calls him, the judge
himself, who had then been on the bench for twelve
years. Members of the house might be excused
from living in commons on account of their wives
being in town, or for other special reasons (Foss).
In the last year of Philip and Mary (1558)
eight gentlemen of the Temple were expelled the
society and committed to the Fleet for wilful disobedience to the Bench, but on their humble
submission they were readmitted. A year before
this a severe Act of Parliament was passed, prohibiting Templars wearing beards of more than
three weeks' growth, upon pain of a forty-shilling
fine, and double for every week after monition.
The young lawyers were evidently getting too
foppish. They were required to cease wearing
Spanish cloaks, swords, bucklers, rapiers, gowns,
hats, or daggers at their girdles. Only knights
and benchers were to display doublets or hose of
any light colour, except scarlet and crimson, or
to affect velvet caps, scarf-wings to their gowns,
white jerkins, buskins, velvet shoes, double shirtcuffs, or feathers or ribbons in their caps. Moreover, no attorney was to be admitted into either
house. These monastic rules were intended to
preserve the gravity of the profession, and must
have pleased the Poloniuses and galled the Mer.cutios of those troublous days.
In Elizabeth's days Master Gerard Leigh, a
pedantic scholar of the College of Heralds, persuaded the misguided Inner Temple to abandon
the old Templar arms—a plain red cross on a
shield argent, with a lamb bearing the banner of
the sinless profession, surmounted by a red cross.
The heraldic euphuist substituted for this a flying
Pegasus striking out the fountain of Hippocrene
with its hoofs, with the appended motto of "Volat
ad astera virtus," a recondite allusion to men, like
Chaucer and Gower, who, it is said, had turned
from lawyers to poets.