The Inns of Court

by Cecil Headlam

The Entrance Tower was designed by Savage (1831): the Louvre was restored by Hakewill. An oil-painting, attributed to Hogarth, of the Hall Court, with the Entrance Tower of the Hall in its ancient state, is to be seen in the Benchers’ Committee Room of the Inner Temple.

One of the most splendid Refectories in England, comparable to the Hall of Christ Church at Oxford, this noble room adds to the charm of its beauty the charm of a literary memorial. For from this stage the exquisite poetry and gentle fun of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ first fell upon the ears of the listening lawyers upon occasion of a Christmas Revel three hundred years ago. Here Shakespeare himself, we must believe, has trodden; those rafters rang once with the poet’s voice. For even if he did not act himself in his play that night of wonderful Post-Revels—and that, in spite of tradition, is indeed scarcely probable, for the dramas performed on these occasions were, as we have seen, acted by members of the Inn—yet it is more than probable that he would be employed as Stage-Manager for the occasion, and would take his natural part in rehearsing the play.

It so happens that one John Manningham—a fellow-student, by the way, of John Pym—kept a diary of his residence in the Temple from 1601 to 1603. That diary has been preserved among the Harleian Manuscripts now in the British Museum. And on February, 160½, he made a note which will cause his name to live for ever. ‘At our feast,’ he wrote, ‘Wee had a play called “Twelve Night, or What you will,” much like the “Commedy of Errores,” or “Menechmi” in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called “Inganni.”[37]

And to this stately Hall, we may be sure, came Elizabeth, surrounded by a brilliant group of statesmen, lawyers, sailors, to witness such plays, or perchance to lead the dance with some comely courtier like Sir Christopher Hatton. The connection of the Middle Temple with the great Elizabethan Admirals and Adventurers is indeed noteworthy.

Sir Francis Drake was honourably received by the Benchers in this Hall after his victories in the West Indies (1586), and in the Hall, below the daïs, is a serving-table made out of the timber of his ship, the Golden Hind. He had been admitted, honoris causa, to the Society of the Inner Temple four years earlier. Other famous Elizabethan seamen were admitted at the Middle Temple in the persons of Sir Martin Frobisher, Admiral Norris, Sir Francis Vere (all in 1592), and Sir John Hawkins (1594). Taken in conjunction with the fact that Richard Hakluyt, the elder, was a Bencher of the Middle Temple; that Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been admitted to membership of the Inn in 1575, placed the expedition he sent out in 1602 under the command of Bartholomew Gosnold, another Middle Templar; that the records show that several members of the Middle Temple were interested in the early development of Virginia; and that the Inn possesses the only existing copy of the ‘Molyneux Globes,’ this and other indications seem to justify Mr. Bedwell’s contention[38] that ‘the colonizing enterprises of the closing years of the sixteenth century were closely associated with the Middle Temple,’ and that on both sides of the Atlantic members of that Inn took a prominent part in the ‘birth of the American Nation.’

This connection with the Colonies, natural, necessary and profitable both to those new countries, which thus obtained the services of educated men—Governors trained in knowledge of affairs, and Attorney-Generals imbued with the high traditions of English Law—and to the Inns themselves, which were thus kept in touch with the New World, is illustrated by the fact that the Middle Temple is represented by no less than five of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Of these, Thomas McKean is said to have written the Constitution of Delaware in a single night. And of the other four, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Lynch, Thomas Heyward, and Arthur Midleton—all Representatives of South Carolina—the first is believed to have drafted the greater part of the Constitution of that State, and was afterwards Chairman of the Committee of Five who drafted the first Constitution of the United States.

Meanwhile the literary and dramatic tradition of the Middle Temple was continued by such members of the Society as Congreve, Wycherley, Ford, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Shadwell, King William’s Poet Laureate, who lives in Dryden’s Satire. Later, that tradition was continued by Sheridan, Thomas Moore, Thomas de Quincey, and Henry Hallam, the historian of the Middle Ages.

Since 1688, when a change was made in the oath of supremacy, which, by a statute of 1563, all Utter Barristers were required to take, the names of the members of the Inns of Court who are entitled to practise in the Courts have been preserved in the Barristers’ Roll. Since 1868 barristers have been excused the oath, but the Roll must still be signed after call to the Bar. The lists are kept in the Public Record Office.

The names of eminence inscribed upon this wonderful Roll can only be hinted at here. The Middle Temple can boast such great lawyers as Edmund Plowden and Blackstone, and Lord Chancellors in Clarendon, Jeffreys (who was a student here, but called to the Bar at the Inner Temple), Somers, Cowper, and Eldon; whilst Mansfield, C.J., Lord Ashburton, Robert Gifford, Lord Stowell, Lord Campbell, Cockburn, the Norths, and the Pollocks, were men and lawyers of no less eminence. Nor must we omit to mention one whose undying fame was earned, not in the Courts, but in the Camp; for Sir Henry Havelock, the hero of Cawnpore and Lucknow, figured among the Templars ere he went to India. Of another kind of eminence was Elias Ashmole, the Antiquary, whose name lives at Oxford. In the destructive fire of 1678 he lost in his rooms at the Middle Temple his papers, books, and rich collection of coins and medals. His friend, John Evelyn, the diarist, also had rooms in the Middle Temple, in Essex Court, just over against the Hall Court (1640).