INNS OF COURT
_Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song.
At length they all to mery London came,_
* * * * *
_There when they came, whereas those brickly towers
The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe ryde
Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer Knights to byde,
Till they decayed through pride:_
* * * * *
_Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song._
--SPENSER: “Prothalamion, or a Spousall Verse.”
There are no more peaceful gardens in all London than those among
the venerable buildings devoted to the study of the law. There is a
sense of dignity and repose, the moment one has entered from the noisy
thoroughfares which surround these quiet courts. They may be dark,
dull, and dingy, as seen by a Dickens, and sombre and serious, to those
whose business lies there; but to the ordinary Londoner, who loves the
old world of the City, and the links that bind the present with the
past, there are no more reposeful places than these gardens. The courts
and buildings seem peopled with those who have worked and lived there.
If stones could speak, what tales some of these could tell!
The best-known, perhaps, of the gardens are those belonging to the
Inner and Middle Temple, as their green lawns are visible from the
Embankment. They add greatly to the charm of one of London’s most
beautiful roadways, now, alas! desecrated by the rush of electric
trams, and its fine young trees sacrificed to make yet more rapid the
stream of beings hourly passing between South London and the City.
The modern whirl of business life can leave nothing untouched in this
age of bustle, money-making, ceaseless toil, and care. Even pleasures
have to be provided by united effort, and partake of noise and hurry.
Thought and contemplation are hardly counted among the pleasures of
life; yet to those who value them, even to look through the iron
railings on the smooth turf brings a sense of relief. Even to those
who scarcely seem to feel it, the very existence of these haunts of
comparative peace, which flash on their vision as they hurry by, leaves
something, a subtle influence, a faint impression on the brain. It
must make a difference to a child who knows nothing beyond the noisy
streets and alleys in which its lot is cast, to hear the rooks caw and
the birds sing in the quiet gardens of Gray’s Inn. It must come as a
welcome relief, even though unperceived and unappreciated, from the din
and clatter in which most of its days are passed. One cannot be too
grateful that it has not been thought necessary to change and modernise
“our English juridical university.”
Although the four great Inns of Court are untouched, the lesser Inns
have vanished or are vanishing. Clement’s Inn has gone. The garden
there was small, but had a special feature of its own--a sun-dial
upheld by the kneeling figure of a blackamoor. This is now preserved
in the Temple Garden, where it appeared soon after Clement’s Inn
was disestablished in 1884. Clement’s Inn, which appertained to the
Inner Temple, was so named from the Church of St. Clement Danes and
St. Clement’s Well, where “the City Youth on Festival Days used to
entertain themselves with a variety of Diversions.” The sun-dial is
said to have been presented to the Inn by a Holles, Lord Clare, and
some writers state that it was brought from Italy. It was, however,
more probably made in London by John Van Nost, a Dutch sculptor, who
came to England in William III.’s time, and established himself in
Piccadilly. When he died in 1711 the business was continued by John
Cheere, brother of Sir Henry Cheere, who executed various monuments
in Westminster Abbey. Similar work is known to have issued from this
studio. At Clifford’s Inn, which was also attached to the Inner Temple,
there is still a vestige of the garden, but it looks a miserable doomed
wreck, a few black trees rising among heaps of earth and rubbish. It
was described in 1756 as “an airy place, and neatly kept; the garden
being inclosed with a pallisado Pale, and adorned with Rows of Lime
trees, set round the gravel Plats and gravel walks.” Its present
forlorn appearance is certainly not suggestive of its past glories.
Barnard’s Inn has been converted into a school by the Mercers’ Company;
it also has its court and trees on a very small scale. Staples Inn,
so familiar from the timbered, gabled front it presents to Holborn,
carefully preserved by the Prudential Assurance Company, its present
owners, still has its quiet little quadrangle of green at the back.
It was of that Dickens wrote such an inimitable description. “It is
one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing streets
imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton
in his ears and velvet soles on his boots.” Furnival’s, Thavies’, and
all the other Inns famous in olden days, have disappeared, and their
quiet little gardens with them.
The Temple Gardens are larger now than in the earlier days of their
history, as then there was nothing to keep the Thames within its
channel at high tide. The landing steps from the river were approached
by a causeway of arches across the muddy banks. It was not until 1528
that a protecting wall was built, and a pathway ran outside the wall
between it and the river. Gardens must have existed on this site from
a very early date. When the Templars moved there from Holborn and
built the church in 1185, it was all open country round, with a few
great houses and conventual buildings standing in their own orchards
and gardens. After the suppression of the Order, it was in the hands
of Aimer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and in 1324 the land was given
to the Knights of St. John. As they had their own buildings and church
not far off, they granted it “to the Students of the Common Lawes of
England: in whose possession the same hath sithence remained.” All the
consecrated land, and all within the City, was included in the grant to
the Knights of St. John: besides this there was some land outside the
City, or the Outer Temple, part of which remained in secular hands, and
in later times was covered by Essex House, with its famous gardens. The
section belonging to the Law Societies, beyond the City, is spoken of
in early records as the Outer Garden, and from time to time buildings
were erected on it--at first under protest, as in 1565 there was an
order “for the plucking down of a study newly erected,” and again in
1567, “the nuisance made by Woodye, by building his house in the Outer
Garden, shall be abated and plucked down, or as much thereof as is upon
Temple ground.” All this garden has long ago been completely built
over, and the large spaces now forming the Temple Gardens are those
anciently known as the “Great Garden,” belonging to the Inner Temple
and the Middle Temple Garden. The Outer Temple (never another Inn) was
merely the ground outside the limits of the City.
The long green slopes down to the Embankment, are much larger than the
older gardens, as the wall which was built in 1528 to keep out the
river, cut across from where No. 10 King’s Bench Walk now stands. The
wall must have been a vast improvement, and was greatly appreciated.
In 1534 a vote of thanks was passed by the “parliament” of the Inner
Temple to the late Treasurer, John Parkynton, who had “takyn many and
sundrie payns in the buylding of the walle betwene the Thamez and
the garden,” for which “greate dyligens” they gave unto him “hartey
thankes.” And, indeed, the garden must sorely have needed this
protection. It is difficult to picture the Temple in the sixteenth
century, and the little gardens must have been as bewildering as the
present courts and buildings. In the records there are references to
various gardens, no doubt small enclosures like the present courts,
besides the Great Garden and the kitchen-garden. There was the nut
garden, perhaps adorned with nut trees, as Fig-tree Court probably was
with figs. There is more than one record of payments for attending to
the fig-tree or painting rails round it. In 1610, just at the time
James I. brought them into notice, a mulberry was “set in Fairfield’s
Court.” In 1605 seats were set “about the trees in Hare’s Court”; thus
all the courts were more or less little gardens. In 1510 a chamber is
assigned to some one “in the garden called le Olyvaunte.” This was
probably the Elephant, from a sign carved or painted to distinguish a
particular house facing it. There was similarly “le Talbott,” probably
from a greyhound sign, in another court. The houses facing the Great
Garden apparently had steps descending into it from the chief rooms,
and it was a special privilege to have your staircase opening on to it.
Thus, “May 1573, Mr. Wyott and Mr. Hall, licensed to have ‘a steeyrs’
(stairs) from their chamber into the garden.” The Great Garden was
constantly being encroached on as new chambers were built. Entries in
the records with regard to permission to build into the garden often
occur; for instance--
“1581. Thomas Compton ... to build ... within the compass of the garden
or little Court ... from the south corner of the brick wall of the said
garden ... 57 feet ... and from the said wall into the garden 22 feet.”
On one occasion a license to build was exceeded, and the offence
further aggravated by cutting down “divers timber trees.” The offender
was at first put out of commons, and fined £20, which was afterwards
mitigated to £5, with the addition of a most wise proviso, that “he
shall plant double the number of trees he caused to be cut down.” Would
that the fault of felling timber always met with the same punishment!
When houses were put on the site of the present Paper Buildings in
1610, the Great Garden was cut in two, and the eastern portion went
to form the broad stretch with its trees known as King’s Bench Walk.
Elm trees were planted, and the walks and seats under them repaired
from time to time, and kept in good order. The part to the west was
carefully tended, and became from that year the chief garden. In James
I.’s reign, that age of gardening, when every house of any pretensions
was having its garden enlarged, and Bacon was laying out the grounds of
Gray’s Inn, the Temple was not behind-hand. The accounts show constant
repairs and additions and buying of trees. The items for painting posts
and rails are very frequent. Probably they do not always refer to
outer palings, but it may be that the Tudor fashion of railing round
the beds, with a low trellis and posts at the angles, still prevailed.
One of the largest items of the expenses was for making “the pound” in
1618. This, it is said, was a pond, but no record of digging it out, or
filling it with water occurs, while all the payments in connection with
it went to painters or carpenters, and therefore it was more probably a
kind of garden-house, much in favour at that time, made by the wall, to
command a view over the river. The chief items with regard to it are:--
“1618, To John Fielde, the carpenter, for making ‘the pound’ in the
garden, £19.”
“To Bowden, the painter, for stopping and ‘refreshing’ the rails in the
‘wakes’ (walks), the posts, seats and balusters belonging to the same,
and for stopping and finishing the ‘pound’ by the waterside, £9, 10s.”
Again in 1639 the entry certainly implies some kind of summer-house and
not “a pond”: “Edward Simmes, carpenter, for repairing ‘the pound’ and
other seats in the garden and walks, &c., £15, 8s.” There must have
been another summer-house at the same time, unless the sums paid to
a plasterer “for work done about the summer-house in the garden,” in
1630, refers to the same “pound.”
A great deal seems to have been done to the Garden during the first few
years of the Commonwealth, and large sums were expended in procuring
new gravel and turf: “392 loads of gravel at 2s. 6d. the load” is one
entry. But the chief work was the re-turfing. An arrangement was made,
by payment of various small sums to the poor of Greenwich, to cut
3000 turfs on Blackheath, and convey them in lighters to the Temple
Stairs. A second transaction procured them 2000 more, each turf being
a foot broad and a yard long. These amounts would cover a third of
an acre with turf. The head gardeners seem to have been particularly
unruly people. Although they remained in office many years, there were
frequent complaints. On one occasion this official had cut down trees,
another time he had the plague, and his house was frequented by rogues
and beggars. At first the gardener’s house was on the present King’s
Bench Walk side of the Garden, near the river; later on, near where
Harcourt Buildings are now. In 1690 the house, then in Middle Temple
Lane, was turned into an ale-house, and evidently none of the quietest,
for the occupier was forbidden to sell drink, and the “door out of the
gardener’s lodge towards the water gate” was ordered to be bricked up,
so as to prevent all the riffraff from the river rioting in his rooms.
Yet the post descended from father to son. In 1687 Thomas Elliott
succeeded his father, Seth Elliott, who had been there some years, and
when in 1708 Charles Gardner had taken the second Elliott’s place, his
daughter Elizabeth’s name occurs as a recipient of money, and Elliott
himself received a pension of £20 a-year, although he was the culprit
of the riotous ale-house. During the years succeeding the Restoration,
the Garden seems to have been little touched. The kitchen-garden would
still be maintained, and either it was farmed by the gardener, or its
supplies were inadequate, as on fast-days there was always a special
payment to the gardener for vegetables. Such items as the following
are of frequent occurrence: “Sallating for the hall in grass week,
strewings and ‘bow pots’ for the hall in Easter and Trinity terms.”
Though the French fashions in gardening of Charles II.’s reign do not
seem to have affected the Temple precincts, yet the Dutch influence
that came in with William and Mary made itself felt. A small garden
was specially set apart for the Benchers, and done up entirely in
the prevailing style. A piece of ground between King’s Bench Office
and Serjeants’ Inn was made use of for this. It had been let to the
Alienation Office, but after the Great Fire the Temple resumed the
control of it, and finally did it up and replanted it for the use of
the Benchers. It was known as the “Benchers’,” the “Little” or the
“Privy” Garden, and great care, attention, and money were expended
on it. Turf, gravel, and plants were bought; a sun-dial put on
the wall; orange trees set out in tubs; and a fountain erected in
the middle. This fountain must have been the chief feature of the
Garden, and from the immense amount of care it required to keep it
in order, it seems that it was one of those elaborate “waterworks,”
without which no garden was then complete. Such fountains were made
with secret arrangements for turning on the water, which dropped
from birds’ bills, or spurted out of dolphins or such-like, with an
unpleasant suddenness which gave the unwary visitor a shower-bath.
Other fountains played tunes or set curious machinery in motion, or
otherwise surprised the beholder. From the descriptions, this one in
the Benchers’ Garden doubtless concealed some original variation. It
consisted of a lion’s face with a copper scallop shell, and a copper
cherry-tree with branches, and perhaps the water dropped from the
leaves. One payment in 1700 occurs for “a new scallop shell to the
fountain, for a cock and a lion’s face to draw the water out of the
fountain, and for keeping the fountain in repair, £12.” The copper
cherry-tree was painted, and perhaps the Pegasus--the arms of the Inner
Temple--figured in the strange medley, as the cost of painting the tree
and “gilding the horse” are together paid to the man “Fowler,” who had
charge of the fountain. The “best way to bring the water” had to be
carefully considered for these “waterworks” which Fowler was designing
and carrying out, and it evidently was brought up to the pitch of
perfection required of a fountain in those days. There was also a
summer-house with a paved floor, and an alcove with seats. Altogether,
even without the glories of the strange fountain, the little enclosed
Dutch garden must have been an attractive place.
[Illustration: THE INNER TEMPLE GARDEN]
While the Benchers’ Garden was being made, the Great Garden was not
neglected. Its form was altered to suit the prevailing taste. This
remodelling must have begun in the winter of 1703, as it was then
resolved that “the trees in the Great Garden be cut down, and the
Garden to be put in the same model as the gardener hath proposed.” The
delightful terrace, which is still one of the most beautiful features
in the Garden, existed before these alterations began, but the sun-dial
which still adorns it was added during these changes. The payment for
it was made to Strong, who was contractor for St. Paul’s under Wren:
“To Edward Strong, for the pedestal for the dial in the Great Garden
steps, &c., £25.” The beautiful gates of wrought iron were put up in
1730. The design shows the arms of Gray’s Inn, as well as the winged
horse of the Inner Temple, in compliment to the other learned society,
its close ally. In the same way the Pegasus occurs at Gray’s Inn. It
was probably along this terrace that some of the orange trees in pots
were placed during the summer. The pots in which these oranges and
other “greens” were grown seem to have been specially decorative. It
was a serious offence when Allgood, a member of the Inn, broke some,
and was obliged to “furnish other pots of like fashion and value,”
otherwise he would “be put out of commons.” After this others were
purchased, as the payment of £8 was made “for a large mould, carved
in wood, for casting of earthen pots for the Garden”; and in other
years further similar expenses occur, one in 1690 “to the potter for
a large pot made for the Garden, painted in oil, £1, 5s.” Some of the
plants grown would stand the winter in the open, but after the oranges
made their appearance a shelter had to be provided. Green-houses owed
their origin to this necessity, and as they were only used in winter,
and merely sheltered the large pots of “greens,” these green-houses or
orangeries were built like rooms, and used as summer-houses during warm
months. All the larger gardens had their green-houses, but the smaller
proprietors frequently sent their plants away to a nurseryman to be
housed during the winter. Even the “greens” at Kensington Palace were
kept by London and Wise, until the new orangery was built. The Temple
orange trees were first sent to the house of Cadrow at Islington.
In 1704 the green-house seems to have been made, and used as a
garden-house in summer. Such items in the accounts as “a chimney-glass
and sconces for the green-house” show that it was in the usual solid
architectural style then in fashion. That the “panierman,” an officer,
one of whose duties was to summon members to meals by blowing a horn,
was appointed to take charge of it as well as of the library, is a
further proof that it bore the character of a room, and was more or
less outside the gardener’s department. The panierman also had the
care of the elaborate fountain, after it had been supervised for some
years by the maker. This green-house stood at the end of the terrace,
which still runs parallel with Crown Office Row, and near the site of
Harcourt Buildings, behind the gardener’s house. This gardener’s house
was pulled down two or three years later to make way for Harcourt
Buildings, which was joined to the summer-house. The first or ground
floor opened on to the garden below the “paved walk” or terrace, on
which level stood the summer-house.
The most fascinating feature of a garden ought to be its flowers,
and of these also some particulars can be gleaned from the accounts.
There is enough to show that the Temple Garden was quite up to date
in its horticulture, and that it followed fashion as closely in its
plants as in its design. It is not surprising to find Dutch bulbs, and
especially tulips, being bought when such a lover of those flowers
as Sir Thomas Hanmer was a member. He was one of those who devoted
much time to the culture of that flower, when the tulip mania was at
its height, and raised new varieties, which were known by his name,
“the agate Hanmer.” In 1703 the list of bulbs purchased is carefully
noted. There were “200 ‘junquiles’ at 6s. a hundred; for 200 tulips
at 5s. a hundred; for 100 yellow Dutch crocus, for 50 Armathagalum.”
The spelling of “junquiles” is much more correct than our modern
“jonquil,” and all the old writers would have written it so. Parkinson,
in 1629, describes them as “Narcissus juncifolius” or the “Junquilia
or Rush Daffodill”; but “Ornithogalum” was too much for the Temple
scribe. The “Ornithogalum” or “Starre of Bethlehem,” and probably one
of the rarer varieties, must be meant by “Armathagalum.” The Arabian
variety was then “nursed in gardens,” but it should be “housed all the
winter, that so it may bee defended from the frosts,” wrote Parkinson,
and sadly admitted that the two roots sent to him “out of Spain” had
“prospered not” “for want of knowledge” of this “rule.” There was also
the “Starre flower of Æthiopia,” which “was gathered by some Hollanders
on the West side of the Cape of Good Hope”; and this is more likely
to have been the variety bought for the Temple with the other Dutch
bulbs. Among the other purchases were various shrubs, on which the
topiary art was then commonly practised. There were “15 yew trees for
the Great Garden in pots, ... 4 box trees for the grass plots, ...
12 striped ‘fillerayes’”--this latter being variegated phillyreas
(most likely _angustifolia_), which were largely used for cutting
into quaint shapes. Another account is for “28 standard laurels, 4
‘perimic’ (laurels), 6 junipers, 4 hollies, and 2 perimic box trees.”
These “perimetric” trees had already gone through the necessary
clipping and training, to enable them to take their place in the trim
Dutch garden. Another year flowering shrubs are got for the Benchers’
Garden: “2 messerius at 2s., and 2 lorrestines at 2s.” The _Daphne
mezereum_ had been a favourite in English gardens from the earliest
times, and the laurestinus (_Viburnum tinus_) came from South Europe in
the sixteenth century. Parkinson, the most attractive of all the old
gardening authors, has a delightfully true description of the “Laurus
Tinus,” with its “many small white sweete-smelling flowers thrusting
together, ... the edges whereof have a shew of a wash purple or light
blush in them; which for the most part fall away without bearing any
perfect ripe fruit in our countrey: yet sometimes it hath small black
berries, as if they were good, but are not”! Fruit-trees were also
to be found--peaches, “nectrons,” cherries, and plums, besides figs
and mulberries. That the walls were covered with climbing roses and
jessamine is certain, from the oft-recurring cost of nailing them up.
“Nails and list for the jessamy wall,” and the needful bits of old felt
required to fasten them up, was another time supplied by “hatt parings
for the jessamines.”
Thus it is easy, bit by bit, out of the old accounts, to piece together
the Garden, until the mind’s eye can see back into the days of Queen
Anne, and take an imaginary walk through it on a fine spring evening.
The Bencher walks out of the large window of the “green-house” on to
the terrace, where the sun-dial points the hour: the orange trees,
glossy and fresh from their winter quarters, stand in stiff array, in
the large artistic pots. Down the steps, a few stiff beds are bright
with Dutch bulbs in flower. The turf, well rolled (for a new stone
roller has just been purchased), stretches down to the river between
straight lines of quaintly cut box, yews, and hollies. He sees Surrey
hills clear in the early evening light, and the barges sail by, and
boats pass up and down the river. He may linger on one of the seats
in the garden-house overlooking the river, or wander back under the
stately elms of King’s Bench Walk, to rest awhile in the Privy Garden,
where the air is scented with mezereum, and cooled by the drops that
fall from the metal leaves hanging over the basin of the fountain.
The Middle Temple, too, had its Benchers’ Garden, and part of it
survives to this day in the delightful Fountain Court. The Benchers’
Garden was larger, covering the ground where Garden Court now stands,
up to the wall of the famous gardens of Essex House. A garden covered
the space where the library has been built, and the terrace and steps
in front of the fountain reached right across to the Essex House
wall. Below the beautiful old hall which Queen Elizabeth opened in
person, and where Shakespeare’s contemporaries witnessed “Twelfth
Night,” lay the rest of the Garden, with green lawns and shady trees
down the water’s edge. The fountain, once the glory of the Benchers’
private garden, is still one of the most delightful in all London. Sir
Christopher Hatton, whose garden of Ely Place--wrung by Queen Elizabeth
from the unwilling Bishop--was not far off, was an admirer of the
Middle Temple fountain. It was kept, he says, “in so good order as
always to force its stream to a vast and almost incredible altitude.
It is fenced with timber palisades, constituting a quadrangle, wherein
grow several lofty trees, and without are walks extending on every
side of the quadrangle, all paved with Purbeck, very pleasant and
delightful.” In an eighteenth-century picture, with groups of strollers
and a lady passing the gay company in her sedan chair, the palings are
superseded by fine iron railings enclosing the lofty jet, its marble
basin, and shady trees. The pavement ended with the terrace wall
overlooking the garden below, and the Thames covered at high tide what
is now the lower part of the lawn. The Fountain Court has inspired
many a thought which has found expression in prose and verse, but no
picture is more vivid or well known than the figure of Ruth Pinch, in
“Martin Chuzzlewit,” waiting for her brother “with the best little
laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the fountain,”
or the description at the end, of that crowning day to her happiness,
when she walks there with John Westlock, and “Brilliantly the Temple
Fountain splashed in the sun, and laughingly its liquid music played,
and merrily the idle drops of water danced and danced, and peeping out
in sport among the trees, plunged lightly down to hide themselves,
as little Ruth and her companion came towards it.” The fountain has
suffered some modernising changes since Dickens wrote those lines; but
in spite of them there is still music in its sound, which calls up
dreams of other ages and of brighter gardens as it tosses its spray
into the murky air.
“Away in the distance is heard the vast sound
From the streets of the city that compass it round,
Like the echo of mountains or ocean’s deep call:
Yet that fountain’s low singing is heard over all.”
--MISS LANDON.
Of all the incidents that are associated with particular places, none
stands out more vividly than the scene told by Shakespeare, of the
first beginning to the Wars of the Roses in the Temple Garden.
[Illustration: THE FOUNTAIN COURT, MIDDLE TEMPLE]
Richard Plantagenet, with the Earls of Somerset, Suffolk, and Warwick,
Vernon, and a lawyer, enter the Temple Garden (“Henry VI.” Pt. I. Act
2, sc. iv.).
_Suffolk._ Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;
The garden here is more convenient.
_Plantagenet._ Then say at once if I maintained the truth,
Or else was wrangling Somerset in the error?
* * * * *
The direct answer being evaded, Plantagenet continues--
Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,
In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts;
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.
* * * * *
_Warwick._ I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.
_Suffolk._ I pluck this red rose with young Somerset.
* * * * *
_Vernon._ I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,
Giving my verdict on the white rose side.
* * * * *
_Lawyer_ (to _Somerset_) ... The argument you held was wrong in you,
In sign whereof I pluck a white rose too.
_Plan._ Now, Somerset, where is your argument?
_Som._ Here, in my scabbard, meditating that
Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.
* * * * *
_Plan._ Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
_Som._ Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
_Plan._ Ay, sharp and piercing to maintain his truth;
Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.
_Som._ Well, I’ll find friends to wear my bleeding roses,
That shall maintain what I have said is true.
* * * * *
_Warwick._ And here I prophesy 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.
With such a tradition the Temple Garden should never be without its
roses. They are one of those friendly plants which will do their best
to fight against fog and smoke, and flower boldly for two or three
years in succession: so a supply of red and white, and the delightful
_Rosa mundi_, the “York and Lancaster,” could without much difficulty
be seen there every summer. Certainly some of the finest roses in
existence have been in the Temple Gardens, as the Flower Shows, which
are looked forward to by all lovers of horticulture, have for many
years been permitted to take place in these historic grounds. How
astonished those adherents of the red or white roses would have been
to see the colours, shades, and forms which the descendants of those
briars now produce. The Plantagenet Garden would not contain many
varieties, although every known one was cherished in every garden,
as roses have always been first favourites. Besides the briars, dog
roses, and sweet briars, there was the double white and double red, a
variety of _Rosa gallica_. Many so-called old-fashioned roses, such
as the common monthly roses, came to England very much later, and
the vast number of gorgeous hybrids are absolutely new. Elizabethan
gardens had a fair show of roses with centifolia, including moss and
Provence roses, and York and Lancaster, _Rosa lutea_, musk, damask,
and cinnamon roses in several varieties; and as the old records show,
the Temple Garden was well supplied with roses. All these probably
flourished there in the days of Shakespeare, and would readily suggest
the scene he immortalised.
Among the spirits that haunt the Temple Garden, there is none that
seems to cling to it more than that of Charles Lamb. It should be a
pride of these peaceful gardens that they helped to mould that lovable
and unselfish character. A schoolfellow, who describes his ways as a
boy at Christ’s Hospital, recalls how all his young days were spent in
the solemn surrounding of the Temple, and how, while at school, “On
every half holiday (and there were two in the week), in ten minutes he
was in the gardens, on the terrace, or at the fountain of the Temple.
Here was his home, here his recreation; and the influence they had
on his infant mind is vividly shown in his description of the old
Benchers.”
“Shadows we are and like shadows depart,” suggests the sun-dial on the
wall of Pump Court, but shadows of such gentle spirits as Charles Lamb
leave something behind, and those “footprints on the sands of time” are
nowhere more traceable than in these solemn precincts of law with their
quiet, restful gardens.
The attractions of the Temple are so great, one feels loth to cross
the noisy thoroughfare and plunge through the traffic till the stately
old gateway out of Chancery Lane, on which Ben Jonson is said to have
worked, affords an opening towards the spacious gardens of Lincoln’s
Inn.
Lincoln’s Inn Gardens have a special claim to antiquity as they are
partly on the site of the famous garden of the Earl of Lincoln, of
which some of the accounts are preserved in a splendid big old manor
roll now at the Record Office. It is supposed that at his death in
1311, Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, assigned these lands to the
“Professors of the Law as a residence.” Additions were made later from
the ground belonging to the Bishop of Chichester, round the palace
which Ralph Neville had built in 1228. Part of the site was the “coney
garth,” which belonged to one William Cotterell, and hence is often
mentioned as “Cotterell’s Garden.” Garden of course only meant a garth
or yard, and though the name now signifies an enclosure for plants, in
early times other enclosures were common. There was the “grass yard”
or lawn, the “cook’s garth” or kitchen-garden, and “coney garth” where
rabbits were kept, as well as the “wyrt yard” or plant yard, the “ort
yard” or orchard, apple yard, cherry yard, and so on. The coney garth
was not a mere name, but was well stocked with game, and even at a
much later date, from Edward IV. to Henry VIII., there were various
ordinances in force for punishing law students who hunted rabbits with
bows and arrows or darts.
[Illustration: LINCOLN’S INN]
In the first year of Queen Elizabeth the Garden was separated from the
fields by a clay embankment, and a little later a brick wall was added,
with a gate into the fields, which is probably the same as the present
little gate to the north of the new hall, at the end of the border,
shown in the illustration. The Garden continued much further along the
wall then, and only was curtailed when the new hall and library were
built in 1843. The delightful terrace which is raised against the wall
overlooking the “fields” was made in 1663. On June 27th of that year,
Pepys, who on other occasions mentions his walks there with his
wife, went to see the alterations. “So to Lincoln’s Inne, and there
walked up and down to see the new garden which they are making, and
will be very pretty.” The outside world seems to have had easy access
to the gardens of all the Inns of Court in those days, but it was
regarded as a special privilege granted to a very wide circle, and
a favour not accorded to the public at large. In the _Tatler_ occur
such passages as, “I went into Lincoln’s Inn walks, and having taken
a round or two I sat down according to the allowed familiarity of
these places.” Again, “I was last week taking a solitary walk in the
garden of Lincoln’s Inn, a favour that is indulged me by several of the
benchers who are my intimate friends.”
They were, however, so much frequented by all the fashionable world
of London, that the foreigner arriving there naturally took them for
public gardens. Mr. Grosley, who came to London in 1765, thus describes
them:--
“Besides St. James’s Park, the Green Park, and Hyde Park, the two last
of which are continuations of the first, which, like the Tuileries
at Paris, lie at the extremity of the metropolis, London has several
public walks, which are much more agreeable to the English, as they are
less frequented and more solitary than the Park. Such are the gardens
contained within the compass of the Temple, of Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s
Inn. They consist of grass plots, which are kept in excellent order,
and planted with trees, either cut regularly, or with high stocks: some
of them have a part laid out for culinary uses. The grass plots of the
gardens at Lincoln’s Inn are adorned with statues, which, taken all
together, form a scene very pleasing to the eye.”
The students must certainly have aimed at keeping their gardens from
the vulgar gaze, and showed their displeasure at some one who had built
a house with windows overlooking the Garden in 1632 in an uproarious
manner. They flung brickbats at the offending window until “one out of
the house discharged haile shot upon Mr. Attornie’s sonne’s face, which
though by good chance it missed his eyes yet it pitifully mangled his
visage.”
Old maps of the gardens show a wall dividing the large upper garden
from the smaller, but by 1772 the partition had disappeared. It was
doubtless unnecessary when the terrace was made and the rabbits done
away with.
The 1658 map with the wall in it shows the upper garden intersected by
four paths, and an avenue of trees round three sides, and the small
garden with a single row of trees round it divided into two large grass
plots. The lovely shady avenue below the terrace in the large garden
has still a great charm, and although not so extensive as it once was,
the great green-sward and walks seem very spacious in these days of
crowding. The terrace overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with the broad
walk and border of suitable old-fashioned herbaceous plants, has great
attractions. The view from here must have improved since the days when
the Fields were a wild-looking place of evil repute, and the scene of
bloody executions. In the lonely darkness below the terrace wall, deeds
of violence were only too common.
“Though thou are tempted by the linkman’s call,
Yet trust him not along the lonely wall.
In the mid-way he’ll quench the flaming brand,
And share the booty with the pilfering band.”
--GAY.
Certainly when one is sentimental over the departed charms of Old
London, it would be an excellent antidote to call up some of the
inconveniences that electric light and the metropolitan police have
banished.
There is more character about the gardens of Gray’s Inn than either
the Temple or Lincoln’s Inn. They have come down with but little
alteration from the hands of that great lover of gardens, Bacon.
But long before his time gardens existed. The land on which Gray’s
Inn stands formed part of a prebend of St. Paul’s of the manor of
Portpoole, and subsequently belonged to the family of Grey de Wilton,
and in the fourteenth century the Inn of Court was established. Between
its grounds and the villages of Highgate and Hampstead was an unbroken
stretch of open country. There, in Mary’s reign, Henry Lord Berkeley
used daily to hunt “in Gray’s Inne fields and in those parts towards
Islington and Heygate with his hounds,” and in his company were “many
gentlemen of the Innes of Court and others of lower condition ... and
150 servants in livery that daily attended him in their tawny coates.”
In Bacon’s time it must still have been as open, and Theobald’s Road
a country lane with hedgerows. The Garden already boasted of fine
trees, and among the records of the Society there is a list of the
elms in 1583 all carefully enumerated, and the exact places they were
growing: “In the grene Courte xi Elmes and iii Walnut trees,” and so
on. Eighty-seven elms, besides four young elms and one young ash,
appear on the list; so the Garden was well furnished with trees even
before Bacon commenced his work. Gray’s Inn was the most popular of
the four Inns of Court in the Elizabethan period, and many famous men,
such as Lord Burghley, belonged to it. It was in 1597 that Bacon
took the Garden in hand, some ten years after he became a Bencher. In
the accounts of that year £7. 15s. 4d. appears “due to Mr. Bacon for
planting of trees in the walkes.” In 1598 it was resolved to “supply
more yonge elme trees in the places of such as are decayed, and that a
new Rayle and quicksett hedge be sett upon the upper long walke at the
good discretion of Mr. Bacon, and Mr. Wilbraham, soe that the charges
thereof doe not exceed the sum of seventy pounds.” On 29th April
1600, £60. 6s. 8d. was paid to “Mr. Bacon for money disbursed about
garnishing of the walkes.”
Bacon’s own ideas of what a garden should be are so delightfully set
forth in his essay on gardens, that the whole as it left his hand
is not difficult to imagine. The fair alleys, the great hedge, were
essentials, and the green, “because nothing is more pleasant to the eye
than green grass kept finely shorn.” His list of plants which bloom
in all the months of the year was compiled of those specially suited
“for the Climate of London,” so no doubt some would be included in this
Garden under his eye, although they do not appear in the records. He
wished “also in the very middle a fair mount,” and even this desire
he carried out in Gray’s Inn. In a description of the Garden as late
as 1761, a summer-house which Bacon put up in 1609 to the memory of
his friend Jeremiah Bettenham is mentioned as only recently destroyed.
“Till lately,” it says, “there was a summer-house erected by the great
Sir Francis Bacon upon a small mount: it was open on all sides, and the
roof supported by slender pillars. A few years ago the uninterrupted
prospect of the neighbouring fields, as far as the hills of Highgate
and Hampstead, was obstructed by a handsome row of houses on the
north; since which the above summer-house has been levelled, and many
trees cut down to lay the Garden more open.” The view, even then, was
fairly open, as Sir Samuel Romilly, in 1780, complains of the cold, as
there was “only one row of houses” between him and Hampstead, and “a
north-west wind blows full against” his chambers. This “most gallant
prospect into the country, and its beautiful walks” were the great
attractions of these Gardens. They appear to have been one of the most
fashionable walks, especially on Sundays. Pepys was frequently there,
and his diary records, several times, that he went to morning church,
then had dinner, then to church again, and after went for a walk in
Gray’s Inn. That he met there “great store of gallants,” or “saw many
beauties,” is the usual comment after a visit. On one occasion, he
took his wife there to “observe the fashions of the ladies,” because
she was “making some clothes.” The walks and trees are redolent with
associations, and the Gardens, though curtailed, have much the same
appearance as of yore. When a portion of the ground was sacrificed to
the new buildings, those who loved the Garden deeply bewailed. “Those
accursed Verulam Buildings,” wrote Charles Lamb, recalling his early
walks in Gray’s Inn Gardens, “had not encroached upon all the east side
of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering away
one of two stately alcoves of the terrace. The survivor stands gaping
and relationless, as if it remembered its brother. They are still
the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court--my beloved Temple not
forgotten--have the gravest character, their aspect being altogether
reserved and law-breathing. Bacon has left the impress of his foot
upon their gravel walks.”
After such a delightful summary of their charms it seems cruel to
try and dispel one of their most treasured traditions--namely, that
Bacon planted the catalpa. It is a splendid and venerable tree, and
there is no wish to pull it from its proud position of the first
catalpa planted, and the finest in existence in this country; but it
is hard to believe that Bacon planted it, in the light of the history
of the plant. There is no mention of a catalpa in any of the earlier
writers--Gerard did not know it, and it is not in the later edition of
his work by Thomas Johnson, in 1633, or in Parkinson’s “Paradisus,”
in 1629, or in Evelyn’s “Sylva,” in 1664, all published after Bacon’s
death.
The tree was first described by Catesby in his “Natural History of
Carolina,” a splendid folio which appeared in 1731. There it is classed
as _Bignonia urucu foliis_, or _Catalpa_, as it was not until later
that Jussieu separated the genus _Catalpa_. He says the tree was not
known to the inhabitants of Carolina till the seeds “were brought there
from the remoter parts of the country,” “and though the inhabitants are
little curious in gardening, the uncommon beauty of this tree induced
them to propagate it, and it is become an ornament to many of their
gardens, and probably will be the same to ours in England, it being as
hardy as most of our American plants: many of them, now at Mr. Bacon’s,
at Hoxton, having stood out several winters without any protection,
except the first year.” Hoxton was then a place famous for its nursery
gardens. In 1767, in Catesby’s volume on the trees of North America,
he gives the same story, and adds, “in August 1748” it produced, “at
Mr. Gray’s, such numbers of blossoms, that the leaves were almost hid
thereby.” This Mr. Gray owned the nurseries in Brompton, famous under
the management of London and Wise.
In Philip Miller’s dictionary, Catesby’s history of the plant is
referred to, and also in 1808, in the _Botanical Magazine_, when the
plant was figured. There it says the plant “has been long an inhabitant
of our gardens, being introduced by the same Botanist [Catesby] about
the year 1728.” “It bears the smoke of large towns better than most
trees; the largest specimen we have ever seen grows in the garden
belonging to the Society of Gray’s Inn.” There is no hint that the
tree in question could have been here before Catesby’s discovery, and
it is not till Loudon’s Encyclopædia in 1822 that the planting is
attributed to Bacon. Such a remarkable tree could hardly have escaped
all gardeners for more than a century, during a time when gardening
was greatly in fashion, and every new plant greedily sought after. We
know that nearly a hundred years ago this specimen was the finest in
England, and therefore it may have been planted not more than a hundred
years or so after Bacon’s death. Raleigh very likely walked with Bacon
on the spot where it now stands, but, alas! the possibility that he
brought Bacon a tree from Virginia, which was only discovered near the
Mississippi a century later, is hardly credible.
The entrance to the Gardens on the Holborn side is through massive
wrought-iron gates, on which the date 1723 is legible. The letters
“W. I. G.” are the initials of the Treasurer during whose tenure of
office they were erected, the “T” above standing for Treasurer. In
the Inns of Chancery a “P” for Principal, associated with the various
initials, is often to be noticed. These fine gates are a charming
approach to the sequestered walks and ancient trees. Gray’s Inn Gardens
have another delightful speciality, in that the rooks delight to honour
them by building there. They have a warm welcome, and good food in cold
weather, and seem likely to remain. Looking through the lofty iron
gates, the rooks’ nests are seen, and the pleasant cawing sound adds
greatly to the attraction of the place.
[Illustration: THE GARDEN GATES, GRAY’S INN]