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.

CHAPTER VII
GRAY’S INN

Beyond Lincoln’s Inn, across Holborn—the road which takes its name from the burn that flowed through the hollow—lies Gray’s Inn, a great quiet domain, quadrangle upon quadrangle, with a large space of greensward enclosed within it.