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.