THE INNER TEMPLE
Mr. Loftie very justly observes of the Middle Temple that ‘Its Lawn
seems wider, its trees are higher, its Hall is older, its Courts are
quainter, than those of the other member of this inseparable pair.’ The
Middle Temple has, indeed, been unkindly compared to a beautiful woman
with a plain husband. This comparison, however, is far from just. For
though its beauty is perhaps less obvious and has been much impaired by
the ravages of modern builders, yet the Inner Temple remains a _locus
classicus_ for the fine beauty of the Jacobean and Queen Anne styles,
and across its green lawn the view of the Embankment, the River, and
Surrey Hills--too often, alas! shrouded in smoke--is extremely
delightful. Moreover, the heart of the Inner Temple presents the
engaging completeness of a Collegiate Building. The Church and Master’s
House on the North; the Cloisters on the West; the Buttery,
Refectories, Hall, and Library on the South; the Master’s Garden, the
Graveyard and Garden of the Inn on the East, form just such a Court or
Quadrangle as delights the eye at Oxford or Cambridge.
I have spoken of the Inner Temple Gateway. In King’s Bench Walk--once
known as Benchers’ Walk--the Inner Temple can boast a row of typical
Jacobean mansions, with handsome doorways,[41] which look upon a broad
and classic avenue of trees. Nor can an Inn, which records the names of
Sir Edward Coke and of John Selden amongst its members, and which was
the home of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb, be reckoned inferior to any in
the fame and interest of its _alumni_.
Dr. Johnson moved from Staple Inn to Gray’s Inn, and from Gray’s Inn to
No. 1, Inner Temple Lane (1760). Here, in a spot so favourable for
retirement and meditation, as Boswell calls it, in a house whose site is
indicated by the ugly block of Johnson’s Buildings (1851), were those
rooms which have been so vividly described by the great man’s admirers.
Here, in two garrets over his chambers, his library was stored, ‘good
books, but very dusty and in great confusion.’ Here was housed an
apparatus for the chemical experiments in which he delighted, whilst the
floor was strewn with his manuscripts for Boswell to scan ‘with a degree
of veneration, supposing they might perhaps contain portions of the
“Rambler” or of “Rasselas.”’ It was in his chambers here on the first
floor, furnished like an old counting-house, that the uncouth genius
received Madame de Boufflers--received her, no doubt, clad, as usual, in
a rusty brown suit, discoloured with snuff, an old black wig too small
for his head, his shirt collar and sleeves unbuttoned, his black worsted
stockings slipping down to his feet, which were thrust into a pair of
unbuckled shoes. And then, when he began to talk, ‘with all the
correctness of a second edition,’ all thought of his slovenly appearance
and his uncouth gestures vanished; the knowledge and the racy wit of the
man triumphed. We see the lady, fascinated by the great man’s
conversation, bowed out of those dirty old rooms, whilst the ponderous
scholar rolls back to his books. Then her escort hears ‘all at once a
noise like thunder.’ It has occurred to Johnson that he ought to have
done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of
quality.
Eager to show himself a man of gallantry, he hurries down the stairs in
violent agitation. ‘He overtook us,’ says Beauclerc, ‘before we reached
the Temple Gate, and, brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers,
seized her hand and conducted her to the coach.’ To the bottom of Inner
Temple Lane came the devoted Boswell, and took chambers in Farrar’s
Buildings--now rebuilt (1876)--in order to be near to the object of his
biographical enthusiasm. Another name famous in Literature the Inner
Temple can boast. Francis Beaumont, the dramatist, was a Member of this
Inn, and in 1612 he wrote the Masques performed by this Inn and Gray’s
Inn before King James at Whitehall, in honour of the marriage of
Princess Elizabeth and the Count Palatine of the Rhine. This Masque he
dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, who represented Gray’s Inn in its
preparation.
The grey walls of Paper Buildings; the plain yellow brick of Crown
Office Row; the stock-brick of Mitre Court, the Goldsmith Buildings that
have supplanted the dingy attic of No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, which
looked through the trees upon the (now vanished) pump in Hare Court, are
none of them buildings which in themselves can stir any emotion but
repulsion, but they have a lasting charm and interest, for they are the
sites of the homes of Elia; they are haunted by the ‘old familiar faces’
of Charles Lamb and his friends.
Charles Lamb first saw the light in No. 2, Crown Office Row, ‘right
opposite the stately stream which washes the garden-foot,’ and there
passed the first seven years of his life. ‘Its church, its halls, its
gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said, for in those young
years what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our
pleasant places?--these are of my earliest recollections.’
The name of these buildings was derived naturally enough, because, at
least from the days of Henry VII., the Clerk of the Crown occupied the
Crown Office in this Inn until its removal to the Courts of Justice in
1882. The eastern yellow brick half of the row, Nos. 1, 2, and 3, was
built in 1737, the western half, Nos. 4, 5, and 6, of stone in the
Italian style, in 1864, by Sydney Smirke. The Row no longer extends to
No. 10, where Thackeray had chambers, sharing them possibly with Tom
Taylor, before he migrated to No. 2, Brick Court.
Of his old Chambers here Taylor wrote with affectionate regret when he
heard of the ‘bringing low of those old chambers, dear old friend, at
Ten, Crown Office Row.’
‘They were fusty, they were musty, they were grimy, dull, and dim,
The paint scaled off the panelling, the stairs were all untrim;
The flooring creaked, the windows gaped, the doorposts stood awry,
The wind whipt round the corner with a wild and wailing cry.
In a dingier set of chambers no man need wish to stow,
Than those, old friend, wherein we denned at Ten, Crown Office Row.’
The present Mitre Court Buildings date from 1830. At No. 16, in the old
block, Charles Lamb once lived (1800), preferring ‘the attic story for
the air.’ ‘Bring your glass,’ he writes to a friend, ‘and I will show
you the Surrey Hills. My bed faces the river, so as by perking upon my
haunches and supporting my carcass upon my elbows, without much wrying
my neck, I can see the white sails glide by the bottom of King’s Bench
Walk, as I lie in my bed.’ In Fuller’s Rents, now replaced by Nos. 1 and
2, Mitre Court Buildings, the Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth’s favourite,
and Sir Edward Coke, the great Chief Justice, once had chambers (1588
_ff._).[42]
Coke was a Bencher before he became Chief Justice and wrote upon
Lyttleton. Sir Thomas Lyttleton (author of the famous ‘Treatise on
Tenures’) is the first name upon the list of the Benchers of the Inner
Temple.
A heavy iron gate, shut at night, marks the entry to Mitre Court and
what was formerly Ram Alley. Between the North side of Mitre Court
Buildings and the entrance to Serjeants’ Inn are the remains of a small
garden, marked by a few sickly trees. Beyond, is a passage leading into
Serjeants’ Inn, which is approached by a flight of steps, and is shut
off from Mitre Court by a door, which at the present day is seldom, if
ever, closed. Through this private way of his, the lines of which can
still be traced, the compact and wiry figure of the great Lord Chief
Justice, Coke, might often have been seen passing between the two
Inns.[43]
From 1809 to 1817 Charles Lamb lived at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, a
house that has been replaced by part of the ugly Johnson’s Buildings.
‘It looks out,’ he says, ‘upon a gloomy churchyard-like Court, called
Hare Court, with three trees and a pump in it. I was born near it, and
used to drink at that pump, when I was a Rechabite of six years old.’
‘That goodly pile of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,’ as Lamb
facetiously calls it, succeeded Heyward’s Buildings, where Selden
laboured. Paper Buildings were burnt down in 1838, thanks to the
carelessness of Sir John Maule, the eccentric Judge, who left a candle
burning by his bedside. Both he and Campbell, afterwards Chancellor,
lost everything in the flames.
In Paper Buildings George Canning, the Statesman, and Samuel Rogers, the
poet, had chambers, and Lord Ellenborough also (No. 6). The present
block, by Smirke, contains the chambers of another Prime Minister in Mr.
Asquith. The Inner Temple can boast yet another Premier in George
Grenville, who became Prime Minister (1763) in the same year as he was
elected Bencher.
The name of Edward Thurlow, the rough-tongued, overbearing Lord
Chancellor, is unhappily connected, like that of Grenville, with the
policy which resulted in the loss of our American Colonies.
Thurlow had chambers in Fig-Tree Court, the smallest and most dismal of
these legal warrens in the Temple. He died in 1806, and was buried in
the Temple Church.
Amongst other great lawyers who had chambers in Paper Buildings, Stephen
Lushington, Edward Hall Alderson, and Sir Frank Lockwood must be named.
Paper Buildings form the Western boundary of the ‘Great Garden,’ which,
indeed, before the erection of buildings here, used to extend to King’s
Bench Walk. It stretched from Whitefriars to Harcourt Buildings and
Middle Temple Lane, and from the Hall to the river wall, and if it has
been narrowed by Paper Buildings, it has been elongated by the
successive embankments of the River. Always carefully cultivated and
planted with shrubs and roses, it remains, little altered by the passing
centuries, one of the sweetest and most grateful of things--a trim
garden in the midst of a grimy town. This is the scene chosen for that
great and growing Flower Show, which is one of the most popular and
pleasing of the social functions of the London season. The great
wrought-iron gate opposite Crown Office Row is a magnificent specimen of
eighteenth-century craftsmanship. It will be noticed that it bears, in
addition to the winged Horse, the arms of
[Illustration: HALL AND LIBRARY, INNER TEMPLE
CROWN OFFICE ROW is on the left, Paper Buildings on the right. The
Gardens run right down to the Thames Embankment, and are the scene of
the Temple Flower Show.]
Gray’s Inn--a compliment to the ancient ally of this Inn, which was
returned upon the gateway of Gray’s Inn Gardens, and over the arch of
the Gatehouse leading to Gray’s Inn Road. It was upon the neighbouring
terrace that the Old Benchers, of whom Lamb wrote so pleasingly, used to
pace. Immediately within the railings is a sundial, which dates from the
beginning of the eighteenth century. Of these ‘garden gods of Christian
gardens, these primitive clocks, the horologes of the first world, there
is a delightful profusion in the Temple. Best known of all of them,
perhaps, is that which is borne by a kneeling black figure in a corner
of the garden near the foot of King’s Bench Walk. It was brought here
from Clement’s Inn. The oft-quoted epigram, which was one day found
attached to this Blackamoor, is feeble enough:
‘In vain, poor sable son of woe,
Thou seek’st the tender tear;
From thee in vain with pangs they flow,
For mercy dwells not here.
From cannibals thou fled’st in vain;
Lawyers less quarter give--
The first won’t eat you till you’re slain,
The last will do’t alive.’
Occasionally as I pass these many sundials, shrouded in the yellow haze
of London fog, or scarce visible through the murk upon the dark walls
of narrow Courts, I find myself repeating Edward Fitzgerald’s mot, when,
after a wet week spent with James Spedding at Mirehouse, he gazed
reflectively upon the sundial in the garden there, and observed: ‘It
_must_ have an easy time of it.’
Fires, frequent and disastrous, have destroyed nearly all the old
buildings in the Inner Temple. Only the Church and a fragment of the
Hall survive from medieval days. The Great Fire (1666), which left the
Middle Temple almost unscathed, wrought devastation in the Inner. The
Inn was then rebuilt with great rapidity, the erection of Chambers being
left to the enterprise of Members, as before, whilst the Society as a
whole devoted itself to the construction of the Library and Moot-Chamber
beneath. In the fire of 1678 the old Library was blown up with gunpowder
in order to save the Hall.
The present Inner Temple Hall is a crude, pseudo-Gothic structure, which
was designed by Sydney Smirke, and was opened by the Princess Louise in
1870. It supplanted the restored and tinkered remains of the old Hall.
For the ancient Refectory of the Knights Templars stood in the time of
Henry VII. on the same site as this Hall, and does, indeed, form the
nucleus of it.[44] The Clock Tower, at the East end of the Library,
which forms one side of the nondescript Tanfield Court, perpetuates an
ancient tower, which was surmounted by a turret built of chalk, rubble,
and ragstone, like the Church, and carried a bell under a wooden cupola.
It stood near to this spot, and was attached to the Treasurer’s house.
The feeble architecture of the exterior is agreeably at variance with
the fine interior of the Hall, with its open timber roof and handsome
screen. Upon the panelled walls, like those of the Middle Temple Hall,
are painted the coats of arms of past Treasurers and Readers, in
perpetuation, as it were, of the old custom of the Knights Templars, who
used to hang their shields upon the walls when they sat two by two at
dinner in the old Hall, wherein, as the Accusers averred, the Novices of
the Order were compelled to spit upon the Cross, to kiss an Idol with a
black face and shining eyes, and to worship the Golden Head kept in the
Treasury adjoining. The doors in the panelling at the East End lead now
to nothing more thrilling than Parliament Chambers--‘a handsome set of
rooms, the walls of which are covered with portraits and engravings of
legal luminaries.’[45]
In the minstrel gallery hang some old drums and banners, which serve to
remind us of the martial achievements of the Lawyers, when ‘forth they
ride a-colonelling.’ Two very richly carved doors at the north and south
entrances to the Hall, one of which bears the date 1575, are reasonably
supposed to be surviving fragments of the great carved screen, said by
Dugdale to have been erected in the Hall in 1574.
The four fine bronze statues of Knights Templars and Knights
Hospitallers are by H. H. Armstead (1875). The Hall is rich in
portraits. Beneath a large painting of Pegasus are portraits of King
William III. and Queen Mary, of Queen Anne, George II., and Queen
Caroline. Portraits of Sir Edward Coke and Sir Thomas Lyttleton, Sir
Matthew Hale, Sir Randolph Carew, and Sir Simon Harcourt, among others,
hang upon the walls.
The old Hall of this, as of the other Inns, was frequently the scene of
Revels and Merry-making.[46] Here, as elsewhere, Christmas Feasts
formed prominent incidents in the life of the Society, and one such has
been described by Gerard Leigh (1576), when the guests were served ‘with
tender meats, sweet fruits and dainty delicates confectioned with other
curious cookery ... and at every course the Trumpeters blew the
courageous blast of deadly War, with noise of drum and fyfe; with the
sweet harmony of Violins, Sackbutts, Recorders and Cornetts, with other
instruments of music, as it seemed Apollo’s harp had tuned their stroke.
Thus the Hall was served after the most antient of the Island.’ And it
was in the old Hall of the Inner Temple that the first performance of
the first English tragedy took place in 1561. This was ‘Gorboduc; or
Ferrex and Porrex,’ and it was written by two distinguished members of
this Society: Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. A hundred years later
Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham,
‘the Oracle of Impartial Justice,’ gave in this Hall the most
magnificent ‘Reader’s Feast’ upon record.
King Charles came in his barge from Whitehall, with his Court, and was
received at the Stairs by the Reader and the Lord Chief Justice in his
scarlet robes. He passed into the Temple Garden through rows of Readers’
servants, clad in scarlet cloaks and white Tabba doubtlets, and the
Gentlemen of the Society in their gowns, whilst music and violins
sounded a welcome to His Majesty. The Duke of York was also present upon
this occasion, and so delighted was he with the entertainment that he,
together with Prince Rupert, was at once admitted to the Society, and
presently became a Bencher.
Sir Heneage Finch was the most famous of a long line of distinguished
members of that family who have been Benchers. It is characteristic of
the Inner Temple that it has and always has had a tendency for members
of the same families to supply the vacancies among the Benchers. The
Pollocks, Wests, Wards, and Finches point back to a long roll of
ancestors distinguished in the Law and the annals of the Temple. This
tendency coincides with the aristocratic nature of the Society. For many
centuries a candidate for Bencher was required to show at least three
generations of ‘gentle blood,’ a regulation which affords a curious
contrast to the more democratic nature of Oxford and Cambridge. In
Elizabeth’s reign it was ordered that ‘none should be admitted of the
Society, except he were of good parentage and not of ill-behaviour.’
Such another Inner Temple family was that of the Hares, who lived for
generations in Hare Court, the south side of which was built by Nicholas
Hare about 1570. Hare Court, together with the rooms once occupied by
Chief Justice Jeffreys, has been recently rebuilt. A doubtful portrait
of that ferocious Judge by Sir Peter Lely was presented to the Inn by
Sir Harry Poland, K.C.
The exterior of the Library Building is not imposing. It contains on the
ground and first floors the Parliament Chambers, offices, and
lecture-rooms, and on the second floor a very fine library, admirably
arranged in a room perfectly suited to the student.
Very early indications of a Library existing with chambers under it are
found in the records. It stood at the west end of the Hall. A later
building, apparently, at the east end of the Hall was afterwards used as
the Library, and was rebuilt in 1680, after having been destroyed by
gunpowder in 1678 in order to save the Hall from the fire in that year.
The north wing, upon the site of No. 2, Tanfield Court, was opened in
1882. A case containing a collection of ‘Serjeants’ Rings’ is of some
interest. In the anteroom to the Parliament Chambers hangs a portrait of
William Petyt, a former Treasurer of the House and Keeper of the Records
at the Tower, who bequeathed his exceedingly valuable collection of
historical documents, etc., to the Inn. A fine piece of carving by
Grinling Gibbons, as it is supposed, which is placed in this anteroom
also, bears the inscription ‘T. Thoma Walker Arm. A.D. 1705,’ and was
the result of a payment of £20 5s. made by Sylvester Petyt, Principal of
Barnard’s Inn and brother of William, as executor of the latter’s
will.[47]
The narrow alley that leads from Fleet Street through Mitre Court and
Mitre Buildings, gives little promise of the broad open expanse of
gravel
[Illustration: NO. 5, KING’S BENCH WALK, INNER TEMPLE
A DOORWAY, probably by Sir Christopher Wren.]
walks, sparsely dotted with plane-trees, and narrowing down to a distant
glimpse of gardens, and of the River beyond, to which it guides our
feet.
This stretch of gravel walks is enclosed on the west by Paper Buildings
and on the east by the buildings of the King’s Bench Walk. The lower
half of the latter, below the gateway leading into Temple Lane, and
facing the Gardens, dates from 1780, and is quite devoid of
architectural merit or even any pretence to it; but the northern section
is composed of houses of rare excellence. The fine proportions, the
appropriate material, the handsome doorways of these houses, and the
graceful iron lamp-brackets in front of them (Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6), all
proclaim the influence of a great master in a good period. The doorways
of Nos. 4 and 5 are, indeed, with every probability, attributed to Sir
Christopher Wren, whose genius was largely employed in the re-building
of the Temple. For the Fire of London reached the Temple two days after
it broke out, and almost completely destroyed all the buildings east of
the Church, King’s Bench Walk included. The houses then were quickly
rebuilt, but, as an inscription on a tablet on No. 4 records, only to be
burnt down again in 1677. No. 4 was rebuilt in 1678, No. 5 in 1684.
In No. 1, James Scarlett, Lord Abinger, had chambers; at No. 5, William
Murray, Lord Mansfield, of whom Colley Cibber, parodying the lines of
Pope, wrote:
‘Persuasion tips his tongue whene’er he talks,
And he has chambers in the King’s Bench Walks.’
Another famous lawyer who had rooms here was Frederick Thesiger, Lord
Chelmsford. The most remarkable of the cases tried by him is said to
have formed the basis of Samuel Warren’s ‘Ten Thousand a Year,’ a novel
whose title we most of us know now better than its contents. The author
of this popular novel, with its legal satire of Quirk, Gammon, and Snap,
was written at No. 12, King’s Bench Walk, in what Warren calls ‘this
green old solitude, pleasantly recalling long past scenes of the
bustling professional life’;--though how King’s Bench Walk can be called
a solitude, or why a solitude should recall the bustling professional
life, deponent sayeth not. Warren was treasurer in 1868. A painting,
attributed to Hogarth, of King’s Bench Walk in 1734, hangs in the
Benchers’ Committee Room, together with a painting of Fountain Court,
also attributed to him. At No. 3 lived Goldsmith in 1765.
And now, since we have drifted again from law to poetry, mention must be
made of two other poets whose names are connected with the Inner Temple.
About the year 1755 William Cowper left his lodging in the Middle
Temple, and took Chambers in the Inner, remaining there till his removal
to the Asylum ten years later. That was nearly three hundred years after
the Father of English poetry is said to have lived here. For, if we
could believe the life of Chaucer prefixed to the Black Letter Folio of
1598, both he and Gower, the poet, were members of the Inner Temple.
‘For not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same
house, where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a
Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street.’ Master Buckley was Chief Butler of
the Inner Temple (1564), and as such performed the functions of
Librarian. He may, therefore, quite well have seen a record to this
effect. But there is no reason to identify this Chaucer with the poet.