It was probably the removal of the Knights Templars to the New Temple that gave rise to the construction of New Street. Some thoroughfare connecting their old property in Holborn with their new premises and the river was necessary to their convenience and their trade. Thus, probably through their instrumentality, New Street, or, as we now call it, Chancery Lane, came into existence, and, connecting two of the main arteries leading from the western suburbs into the City, and cutting through the very heart of the area occupied by the Inns of Court, it soon developed into what Leigh Hunt described as ‘the greatest legal thoroughfare in England.’[48] Chancery Lane, or Chancellor’s Lane, as the name appears in its earlier form, is said to have been called after a Bishop of Chichester, who was Chancellor of England at the end of the thirteenth century. A house and garden, near the southern end of Chancery Lane, was, we know, the town residence of the Bishops of Chichester. Here dwelt St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester (1245-1253), ‘in true possession thereof in right of his Church of Chichester.’ The name of Chichester Rents perpetuated the memory of this episcopal habitation. Possession of this town residence of the Bishops of Chichester was finally acquired by the lawyers about the middle of the sixteenth century. A few years later (1580) they obtained the freehold of the open space known as Coney Garth, or Cotterell’s Garden. But it is not at all clear how the Society of Lincoln’s Inn came into occupation of these premises, or how its name had come to be attached to property properly belonging to the See of Chichester and St. Giles’s Hospital. In the absence of any other obvious explanation, we must look back for the origin of the Society of Lincoln’s Inn to a group of lawyers housed in an Inn belonging to the Earl of Lincoln, and must try to account for their presence on their present property by the theory of a migration from their first hostel. This theory fortunately presents no difficulty, and it is supported by various facts and indications.

The parent house of Lincoln’s Inn would appear to be the Inn of the great Justiciar Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, which stood to the south-east of St. Andrew’s Church. It was natural and necessary for the great Administrators of the Law to gather about their Courts a following of trained lawyers to help them to enunciate the theory, and to perform the business thereof. As the followers of Le Scrope, the great Justice of King’s Bench, settled in Scrope’s Inn, and the followers of De Grey, the Justiciar of Chester, in Grey’s Inn, so about the residence of the great Justice Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, in his Manor of Holborn, congregated the forerunners of the Society of Lincoln’s Inn, students of law and practisers in the Justiciar’s Court.

The hostel of the Earl of Lincoln stood at the north end of Shoe Lane, near Holeburn Bridge. The buildings were erected upon the ruins of the Monastery of the Blackfriars. The Blackfriars had settled themselves in Holborn, west of the north end of Chancery Lane, and gradually amassed property that reached down to the house of the Bishops of Chichester. But presently they followed the example of the Knights Templars, and moved nearer the River to the site of what is still called Blackfriars, just within the City Wall. Their Holborn property they sold a few years later (1286) to the Earl of Lincoln, who undertook to pay 550 marks, in instalments, to the Friars, ‘for all their place, buildings and habitation near Holeborn.’[49]

Now, of Henry, Earl of Lincoln, tradition says that he developed his new estate by cultivating the gardens and orchards upon it, and that he made large sums by selling the fruit grown there. But it was, no doubt, to the labours of the former monkish owners, the preceding Blackfriars, that the gardens and orchards of the Earl of Lincoln owed their so rich and wonderful harvests.

Lincoln, it is said, had so great a love for Lawyers that his house was filled with students of the Law. He had already arranged, according to this tradition, to transfer his house to them entirely, when, in 1311, he died. Such, according to Dugdale, was the story current ‘among the antients here.’ This tradition represents the fact that the Justiciar gathered about him a nucleus of men conversant with the Law, who should be capable of transacting the business of his Court, and who would naturally make it part of their business to train others to their trade. Equally naturally such Lawyers of Lincoln’s Inn would, in accordance with the almost invariable custom of medieval times, form themselves into a Guild, the Society of Lincoln’s Inn. It is probable, then, that the students ‘apt and eager,’ whom the Earl had gathered about him, formed themselves into the very Society which still exists, though it has changed its habitation. That change did not take place immediately after the Earl of Lincoln’s death. Through Lincoln’s daughter and heiress, Alesia, all his property passed to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. The great quantities of wax and parchment recorded, among his household expenses,[50] as used in his Hostel at Shoe Lane, would seem to indicate that the legal business was still carried on here in 1314. Before entering upon the inheritance of Alesia, the Earl of Lancaster had already acquired the property of the Knights Templars, which included not only the New Temple, but also nearly the whole of the western side of New Street or Chancery Lane. Upon the attainder of the Earl of Lancaster in 1321, all his property, including Lincoln’s Inn in Shoe Lane, became the escheat of the King. This was subsequently restored to Alesia, who was known as Countess of Lincoln.

The business of the Law had by this time become centred round Chancery Lane, and the Society of Old Lincoln’s Inn may well have deemed it desirable to migrate southwards. In such case it would be natural to find them settling upon a site which was likewise part of the property of the Earldom afterwards the Duchy, of Lancaster.

Once in full possession of their property, the Lawyers turned with great energy to the business of building. They began to enclose their domain with lofty brick walls. The great Gateway, a Hall, a Library, and a Chapel were begun in the reign of Henry VII. The material chosen was the native red brick of London, so admirably suited to the Town, and the style adopted was that Tudor treatment of brick so admirably suited to the material. The Lawyers were guided in their choice, no doubt, by the possession of a Brick-field in the Coney Garth (= Searle’s Court, now New Square).

One of the chief features of Lincoln’s Inn is the Tudor Gateway, which forms the main entrance into Chancery Lane. The liberality of Sir Thomas Lovell, one of the Benchers of the Society, and Treasurer of the Household of Henry VII., was chiefly responsible for its erection. This magnificent Gatehouse, with its flanking Towers of brick, built in 1518, whilst Wolsey was Chancellor, narrowly escaped destruction, in obedience to the imperious will of Lord Grimthorpe and his Gothic followers.

Fortunately it has survived, and, with the exception of the magnificent Gatehouses of Lambeth Palace and St. James’s Palace, remains almost alone as a specimen of this period of architecture in London, when the Gothic was yielding place to the Palladian style.

The walls of the massive tower, four stories high, are striped with diagonal lines of darker brick. The entrance, under an obtusely-pointed arch, was originally vaulted. The groining has disappeared, but the front still bears, in a heraldic compartment over the arch, the arms of Henry VIII. within the Garter, and crowned, having on the dexter side the purple lion of Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and on the sinister the arms and quarterings of Sir Thomas Lovell.

The bricks of which this Gatehouse and the outer wall of Lincoln’s Inn are built have an interest beyond their colour and their age. For upon the task of laying them ‘Rare Ben Jonson’

is said to have laboured, trowel in hand and book in pocket. Aubrey, in his ‘Lives,’ records that Ben Jonson worked some time with his father-in-law, a bricklayer, ‘and particularly on the garden wall of Lincoln’s Inne, next to Chancery Lane.... A bencher, walking thro’ and hearing him repeat some Greeke verses out of Homer, and finding him to have a wit extraordinary, gave him some exhibition to maintain him at Trinity College in Cambridge.’ This is only a tradition, though a very likely one; and, as Leigh Hunt says, tradition is valuable when it helps to make such a flower grow out of an old wall.

Within the Gatehouse a small Quadrangle is formed by the Chapel, Old Library, and the two wings of Old Buildings. Octagonal turret-staircases fill the corners of these brick buildings, and in the turret at the South-East corner lived Thurloe, who was Secretary of State to Oliver Cromwell. A tablet in Chancery Lane, on the outer face of the building, records this fact, whilst the Treasurership of William Pitt in 1794 is apparently thought so little worthy of memorial that the sundial which once commemorated it has been allowed to disappear.[51] A portrait by Gainsborough of that great Statesman hangs in the Benchers’ Room. Tradition has it that Oliver Cromwell once had chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, an idea which probably sprang from the fact that Richard Cromwell was a student here in 1647.

The brick buildings forming this Court within the Gatehouse were constructed during James’s reign, and it was then decided to build ‘a fair large chapel, with three double chambers under the same,’[52] in place of the one then standing, which had grown ruinous, and was no longer large enough for the Society. This older chapel, which did not stand on precisely the same site, was dedicated to St. Richard of Chichester. The new chapel was raised on arches, which form in themselves a tiny cloister, and produce a pleasing and unexpected effect amid these dusty purlieus of the Law.

The Chapel of Lincoln’s Inn, which was designed, according to Dugdale, by Inigo Jones, in his Gothic manner, and in which Dr. Donne, the witty prelate and great poet, preached the first sermon on Ascension Day, 1623, suffered even more than the Church of the Templars at the hands of the destructive Gothic Revivalists. The Chapel was needlessly enlarged. The buttresses were stuccoed. The beautiful proportions, which Inigo Jones, like all the truly great architects, knew how to impart to his buildings, were wantonly and inexcusably destroyed.

John Donne had entered as a law student at Lincoln’s Inn, and, after taking Orders, he was appointed preacher to the Inn. Before this, when Secretary to Lord Keeper Egerton, he had been secretly married to Anne, Lady Egerton’s niece. Ruin stared him in the face when, on discovery of the marriage, he was dismissed. With a characteristic ‘conceit’ he ‘sent a sad letter to his wife,’ as Walton[53] says, ‘and signed it John Donne, Anne Done, Un-done.’

Having taken Orders at the instance of King James, he was soon afterwards ‘importuned by the grave Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn, who were once the companions and friends of his youth, to accept of their lecture.’ Before he finally left the Inn to be Dean of St. Paul’s, he laid the foundation-stone of the new Chapel, and at the consecration ceremony, 1623, Ascension Day, he preached a sermon on the text, ‘And it was at Jerusalem, the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.’ So great was the throng of listeners that ‘two or three were endangered and taken up dead for the time with the extreme press.’ But Donne, great preacher as he was, lives, not by his sermons, but by his poems and by the Life with which the pen of Izaak Walton conferred immortality upon him.

Like the Master of the Temple, the Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn presides over the Chapel and attends in Hall during term-time. A Preachership was instituted in 1581, and the office has been filled by such men as Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta and hymnologist, and Thomson, Archbishop of York. Amongst earlier Preachers may be mentioned Herring (1726), afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Warburton (1746), Bishop of Gloucester, who founded the Warburton Lectures on Religion, which are annually delivered in the Chapel.

The old coloured glass, representing Old Testament figures and the Twelve Apostles, made by Hall, of Fetter Lane, but probably designed by the Flemish artist, Bernard van Linge, is very good. It is contemporary with the original building, and was paid for by subscribers, who included in their number Noy, the Attorney-General, and Southampton and Pembroke, the friends of Shakespeare.

In the Vaults lie Prynne, whose grave is unmarked, and the youthful daughter of the great Lord Brougham (1839), the only woman ever buried here. Lord Wellesley composed a Latin epitaph to grace her tomb. It has no great merit as a composition.

The Old Hall stands at right angles to the Chapel. Older than the Gatehouse itself, it has been quite ruined by frequent alterations, restorations, and by hideous plastering. It was stuccoed by Bernasconi about the year 1800. ‘The Loover or Lanthorn,’ according to the Records of the Society, was ‘set up in the sixth of Edward VI.’

That the same customs obtained in Lincoln’s Inn as in the other Inns, and were celebrated in this Hall, is indicated by an order of the Society during the reign of Henry VIII., that the ‘King of Cockneys on Childermass Day should sit and have due service; and that he and all his officers should use honest manner and good order, without any waste or destruction making, in wine, brawn, chely, or other vitails ... and that Jack Straw and all his adherents should be banisht and no more be used in this House.’

It was in this Hall that the Lord Chancellor used to sit and hold his Court, under a picture by Hogarth of ‘S. Paul before Felix’ (1750), before the new Law Courts were built.

Adjoining the Hall, on the South side, was the Library. The building is now let out in chambers. This Library was founded by John Nethersale, a member of the Society, who bequeathed forty marks to be spent on the building and on Masses for the repose of his soul (1497). Ever since, it has been increased, and, passing from Old Square to Stone Buildings, and from Stone Buildings to its present noble home, has grown in wealth and usefulness.

Many of the volumes still retain the iron rings attached to their covers, by which, in old times, books in a Library were chained to the desks—as may be seen in the College and University Libraries at Oxford and Cambridge. The Library was further enriched by Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice, 1671, who bequeathed his MSS. to it.

In 1787 the Library was moved to Stone Buildings, and finally to a noble building adjoining the New Hall, which Hardwick had just erected. The fair proportions of this building were unfortunately ruined by Sir Gilbert Scott, who, backed by Lord Grimthorpe, altered them to 130 feet by 40 feet. This new Library and the magnificent Hall adjoining

it were erected in 1843 on the west side of that garden, where Ben Jonson is said to have laboured; and thus, whilst the southern half of the view into Lincoln’s Inn Fields was sacrificed by the Society, a beautiful site, amidst broad green stretches of lawns, shady trees, and flower-beds, was secured for their new blocks. Moreover, the Benchers took great and praiseworthy pains[54] to procure a good design, which should harmonize with the existing buildings ‘in the style of the sixteenth century, before the admixture of Italian architecture.’[55] The result of much deliberation and delay was a singularly successful design by Philip Hardwick, the architect who built the classical portions of Euston Station. Nobly proportioned, constructed of striped brick in the Tudor fashion, with stone dressings, so as to harmonize fitly with the Gatehouse opposite, and decorated with six bays, a projecting window at the north end, and a great south window, fine in detail and fine in its proportions, Lincoln’s Inn Hall is a building as distinguished as it is surprising, when we remember that it is a product of the year 1843.

This Hall was opened with great ceremony by Queen Victoria, and upon that occasion Prince Albert was created a Bencher of the Inn. Within, as without, the Hall is superb; the proportions and the materials are excellent. The roof is elaborately carved, and ornamented with colour and gilt. The windows are rich in stained glass; the royal arms figure in the centre of the beautiful south window, the others are filled with old glass. In some directions, it must be confessed, the decoration is a trifle overdone, especially the heraldic decoration. The arms of the Inn, fifteen fers de moline on a blue ground, with the shield of Lacy ‘or, a lion rampant purpure,’ are repeated with bewildering frequency in every material.

Above the daÏs is the great fresco ‘School of Legislation’ (1852). G. F. Watts had proposed to paint the larger hall of Euston Station, gratis, with a series of frescoes illustrating the ‘Progress of Cosmos.’ The Directors of the London and North-Western Railway fought shy of so unbusinesslike a proposal. Nor can it be said that they were not in some degree wise, for London atmosphere is by no means suitable for fresco-work. The work of art, which the Directors rejected, took shape upon the north wall of the Hall of Lincoln’s Inn. For the Benchers accepted a similar offer from Watts, and that generous-minded artist adorned their Hall with the greatest of English fresco-decorations: ‘Justice, a Hemicycle of Law-givers,’ a group of legislators from Moses to Edward I. The painting has suffered sadly from the acids of the smoke-laden compost known as London air.

The Benchers’ rooms, delightful sanctums that remind one of Oxford Common-rooms, contain some very fine portraits of distinguished members of the Inn: Chief Justice Rayner, by Soest; Pitt, by Gainsborough; Lord Erskine, by Sir Thomas Lawrence; and later portraits by Cope, Sargent, Watts and others, of Lord Davey, Lord Russell of Killowen, Sir Frank Lockwood, Lord Macnaghten, etc. The men famous in Law, in Letters, and in Politics, who have been members of Lincoln’s Inn, are too numerous to mention. Of lawyers, besides Lord Brougham, there are Murray, Lord Mansfield, Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Bathurst, and Lord Campbell. Canning, Perceval, Disraeli, Gladstone, Daniel O’Connell, William Penn, and William Prynne stand out among the makers of history who have been members of this Inn; whilst, among men of Letters, the George Colmans (father and son), Horace Walpole, Charles Kingsley, and George Wither, are amongst the most prominent, though the latter produced his best-known poem in the Marshalsea Prison. And another shade, one may fancy, haunts the green fields of Lincoln’s Inn and the busy, muddy thoroughfare of Chancery Lane: it is that of Sir Thomas More, who passed from Oxford and New Inn to enter at Lincoln’s Inn in 1496, and was presently appointed Reader at Furnival’s Inn. Here, in the intervals of his political career, he made a very large income at the Bar.

The south end of the Hall faces the garden, which is enclosed by the old houses of New Square. The fig-tree and the vine, like some stray survivals from the monkish vineyard, flourish against the soot-blackened bricks at the corner of these old houses, which, in pleasing calm and quiet dignity, surround the well-kept lawn and flower-beds. An empty basin in the centre of this garden marks the spot which was once adorned by a sun-dial and fountain, said to have been designed by Inigo Jones. By Inigo Jones were certainly designed the noble houses on the western side of the great green expanse of Lincoln’s Inn Fields—houses with ‘Palladian walls, Venetian doors, grotesque roofs, and stucco floors.’ I believe some of these houses contain beautiful work in the ceilings, mantelpieces, etc.

The whole Square, indeed, was ‘intended to have been built all in the same style and taste, but, unfortunately, not finished agreeable to the design of that great architect, because the inhabitants had not taste enough to be of the same mind, or to unite their sentiments for the public ornament and reputation’ (Herbert).

Just as the Templars rented a field adjoining their buildings which they used for tilting, so, beyond the houses of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and the Bishop of Chichester, lay a meadow, and beyond it again the Common, still known as Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Before 1602 there were no buildings on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn, and, so late as the reign of Henry VIII., so rural were the surroundings that rabbits abounded there, and had, indeed, to be preserved from the sporting proclivities of the students.

In Great Turnstile and Little Turnstile we have the names of narrow lanes which still recall the days when Lincoln’s Inn Fields were fields indeed, and the Turnstiles gave access to a path which ran under the boundary wall of the Inn, and formed a short cut to the Strand.[56] The enclosing of the Fields with buildings caused much heart-burning among the Benchers and Students of Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1641 the Society presented a petition to Parliament, complaining of the great increase of buildings in their neighbourhood, and ‘the loss of fresh air which the petitioners formerly enjoyed.’ But Parliament turned a deaf ear to the stifling Lawyers, and the building went on unchecked. A century later Gay, in his ‘Trivia,’ recounted the dangers of the neighbourhood:

No. 13, Lincoln’s Inn Fields is one of the most fascinating, as it is one of the richest, of the smaller museums that I know. It is the house of an architectural and artistic genius, filled with the treasures he collected, amidst which he loved to live and work. It is preserved for us as he left it. For this is the home which Sir John Soane built for himself, and in which he died, at the age of eighty-three, in 1837, bequeathing his house and treasures to be preserved as a trust for the Public, and more especially for Amateurs and Students in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

Sir John Soane started life as an office boy at Reading; he was the Architect of the Bank of England and the Dulwich Galleries; he surrounded himself with a school of young architects, and for their instruction and his own delight ransacked Europe for treasures of art, both antiques and of his own day. The scope of this Collection is as striking as its very high level of excellence. Chippendale furniture, French fifteenth-century glass, a noble architectural library, and many historical curios—these are the least of the lovely things he has given to us. Beautiful bronzes and Greek and Etruscan vases are balanced by the work of Wedgwood and Flaxman; superb illuminated manuscripts by the exquisite Mercury of Giovanni di Bologna, and curious ancient gems, upon one of which a head is cut so cunningly that whichever way you turn its gaze follows you. We pass from the marvellous alabaster tomb of Seti I., King of Egypt about 1370 B.C., and Greek and Roman sculptured marbles, to a room in which first editions of ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ confront Tasso’s manuscript, Reynolds’ sketch-book, and the folios of Shakespeare’s plays which Boswell possessed. And yet we have taken no account of the pictures—of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ ‘Snake in the Grass,’ of Canaletto’s ‘Venice’ and Turner’s ‘Van Tromp’s Barge,’ of Watteau’s ‘Les Noces,’ of Raffael’s Cartoons—of a score of pictures and portraits by first-rate artists; and yet there remains that wonderful little room, which is lined by the masterpieces of Hogarth—‘The Election Scenes’ and the ‘Rake’s Progress.’ It is a wonderful place, this London, in which such a treasure-house can lie, unnoticed and almost unvisited, in the centre of an old square in the City.

It is somewhat outside the scope of this book to deal with the dwellers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but mention may be made of Thomas Campbell, the poet, who had chambers at No. 61, whilst No. 58 was the House of Forster, the biographer of Dickens, which is described in ‘Bleak House’: ‘Formerly a house of State ... in these shrunken fragments of its greatness lawyers lie, like maggots in nuts.’

More fascinating than all is that ‘Old Curiosity Shop’ which still survives upon a tiny triangular plot amidst the ruin of tenements that have been lately razed to the ground. It proclaims itself the house immortalized by Dickens, and may very well have been the shop which suggested to him the scene of his ‘Old Curiosity Shop.’ It is an ancient building—an old red-tiled cottage, possibly as old as those superb houses of Inigo Jones, ornamented with the Rose of England and the Fleur-de-Lys of France, on the west side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which were put up a year before Charles laid his head upon the block in Whitehall.

A legend, however, says that it is of later date, a relic of a dairy once belonging to that famous Louise RenÉe de Perrincourt de Queronaille, favourite of Charles II., who was created by him Duchess of Portsmouth. Portsmouth House stood opposite, and was believed to have been purchased by the Duchess from the proceeds of a ship and cargo presented to her by King Charles. But whether this was so or not, and whether the little shop in question is the actual begetter of Dickens’s vision, we cannot say with certainty. We need at least say nothing to discourage the belief which guides the feet of the lover of Dickens to Portsmouth Street, there to purchase souvenirs and conjure up the vision of the dark little shop, with its low ceiling and odd, unexpected corners, once more littered with knick-knacks and second-hand furniture in all stages of breakage and decay, and little Nell and her tender old grandfather sitting there again in the candlelight.[57]

It remains to mention the Northern wing of Lincoln’s Inn, the rectangular Court which lines Chancery Lane on the one side and faces the green sward of the Garden on the other. ‘The Terrace walk,’ says Herbert (p. 301) truly enough, ‘forms an uncommonly fine promenade ... and the gardens themselves, adorned with a number of fine, stately trees, receive a sort of consequence from the grandeur of the adjoining pile.’ This is Stone Building, and is the outcome of a design to rebuild the whole Inn in 1780 in the Palladian style. The design was not carried out, and even this section of the undertaking remained incomplete for sixty years. Even now much of the building is of brown brick. In 1845 Hardwick, who was then carrying out his fine Gothic design for the Hall, completed the faÇade commenced by Sir Robert Taylor. The fine Corinthian pilasters of freestone, the simple pediments, and the chaste greys and pearly whites of the plain stone, thrown into strong relief by the soot-blackened portions of the building where it is not exposed to the cleansing effect of wind and rain, render this nobly-proportioned

Court delightful to the eye, and, contrasting with the warm reds of the other buildings in Lincoln’s Inn, convince one, if one needs convincing, that red-brick and Portland stone are the only materials suitable for London architecture.

In the Eastern wing of Stone Buildings is the Drill Hall of the Inns of Court Volunteers, and here are preserved various memorials of the many Volunteer Associations which have been connected with the Inns of Court.

So far back as the time of the Spanish Armada an armed force was raised amongst the barristers and officers of the Inns for the defence of the country.

A copy of the original deed of this association of lawyers to resist the threatened invasion (1584), relating to Lincoln’s Inn, hangs in the Drill Hall. The original is still in possession of the Earl of Ellesmere, whose ancestor, Thomas Egerton, then Solicitor-General and afterwards Chancellor, was the first to sign it.

Upon the arrest of the Five Members in 1642, five hundred warlike Lawyers marched down to Westminster to express their determination to protect their Sovereign, Charles I.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Charles, who from the beginning of his reign had always encouraged the Benchers and Students to exercise themselves in arms and horsemanship, granted a commission to Edward, Lord Lyttleton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, to raise a regiment of infantry from ‘the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Chancery.’ Lyttleton died of a chill contracted whilst drilling his recruits, and was succeeded by Chief Justice Heath. A regiment of foot ‘for the security of the Universitie and Cittie of Oxford,’ and a regiment of cavalry ‘very fine and well-horsed,’ to guard the King’s person, did not exhaust the fighting capacity of the Lawyers, for the majority of the Bar, who saw the real issue at stake in the country, sided with the Parliament. Bulstrode Whitelock, Lieutenant-General Jones, and Commissary Ireton were Gentlemen of the Robe, who rose to eminence in the service of the Commonwealth. John Hampden, we have seen, was a member of the Inner Temple; Oliver St. John was a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and so, too, tradition says, was Oliver Cromwell, who, when Captain of the Slepe Troop of the Essex Association, occupied chambers in the old Gatehouse here.

Dugdale quotes some orders that were drawn up, in the reign of King James, for establishing ‘the Company of the Inns of Court and Chancery in their exercises of Military Discipline,’ among which was the wise provision that ‘if anyone be a common swearer, or quarreller, he shall be cashiered.’ The number was limited to 600, and ‘It is intended that no Gentlemen are to be enjoyned to exercise in this kind, but such as shall voluntarily offer themselves, to be tolerated to do it at their own voluntary charge.’ The officers were to be chosen by their Captain; every House to give their own Gentlemen their rank, and the priority of the Houses to be decided by chance of dice.

During the rising of the Young Pretender in ’45, Chief Justice Willes raised a regiment ‘for the defence of the King’s person.’ The occasion for arms passed away quickly, and it was not till 1780 that the barristers and students found themselves compelled once more to meet force by force. For the Gordon Rioters, after sacking Lord Mansfield’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, set fire to a distillery belonging to a papist, near Barnard’s Inn, and the gutters of Holborn ran with blazing spirit, of which the rioters drank until they died. It was to escape the fury of the mob that John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, escorted his lovely young wife from his house in Carey Street to the Middle Temple, of which he was a member. Her dress was torn, her hat lost, and her hair dishevelled by the violence of the rioters. ‘The scoundrels have got your hat, Bessie,’ cried the gallant husband, who had made a runaway match with her, ‘but never mind, they have left you your hair!’

So long as the riots continued, the Lawyers kept armed watch in the Halls of their respective Societies. At the Inner Temple the mob forced the gate, ‘and would no doubt have plundered and burnt the place as Wat Tyler’s followers did four centuries before, had not a sergeant of the Guards, who acted as military instructor to the law-gentlemen, called out to the armed Templars: “Take care no gentleman fires from behind!” The rioters, fearing that some ambush had been prepared for them, took to their heels and never again molested this sanctuary of the law. In and around Gray’s Inn, a similar armed watch kept the ‘No Popery’ people at bay, and many years later Sir Samuel Romilly used to point out the gate where, musket in hand, he had stood sentry during some of the worst nights of the riots. The Lincoln’s Inn students, it seems—or, as another account says, those of the Temple—would have joined the military in repressing the riots, but were told by one of the officers in command that he did not wish ‘to see his own men shot!’[58]

After the French Revolution, at the first rumour of invasion by the armies of the Republic, companies of Volunteers were recruited from Lincoln’s Inn and the Temple. Two corps appear to have been formed—one known as the Bloomsbury and Inns of Court Association, and the other the Legal Association. The Lincoln’s Inn Corps was commanded by Sir William Grant, then Master of the Rolls, who had seen service in Canada, at the Siege of Quebec. The Temple Companies were commanded by Lord Erskine, who had served in the Royal Navy before he took to the Law.

Embodied in 1803, the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court took part in the grand Review of Volunteers in Hyde Park before the King. When the Temple Companies defiled before King George III., His Majesty asked Lord Erskine, who commanded them, who they were. ‘They are all lawyers, sir,’ said Erskine. ‘What! what!’ exclaimed the King. ‘All lawyers? Then call them the Devil’s Own!’

Many amusing stories are told of the Lawyer Volunteers—how Erskine used to read the word of command from the back of a paper like a brief, and how Lord Eldon and Lord Ellenborough had to be dismissed for sheer inability to learn the ‘goose-step.’ And it was said that when the word ‘charge’ was given, every member of the Corps produced a note-book and forthwith wrote down six and eightpence! Such was the origin of the subsequent Volunteer Corps, which, when the Volunteer movement came again to the front in the crisis of 1859, was enrolled as the 23rd Middlesex—a title afterwards changed to the 14th Middlesex. Upon the standard of this Inns of Court Volunteer Corps it was proposed to inscribe the appropriate phrase, ‘Retained for the Defence.’ Its popular title, the Devil’s Own, which it still keeps, is inherited from George III.’s witticism—if it was indeed his—anent the Legal Association.

For the South African War some forty men were selected from the Inns of Court for service with the specially raised City Imperial Volunteers, popularly known as the C.I.V. In the welter of War Office rearrangements the existence of the Devil’s Own has been almost miraculously preserved ‘for the Defence.’ But, of course, its title has been altered. The 14th (Inns of Court) Middlesex Volunteer Rifle Corps has now become the 27th London Regiment.