A DOORWAY IN SOUTH SQUARE, GRAY’S INN
It is one of several classic entrances of this type in the Square, and bears the date 1738.
attributed to Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. But references to it occur before 1576, the year in which he became a Member of the Inn.[62] But it was not till 1737 that the need was felt for the erection of a building specially intended to house it. Then an Order was passed for building a Library in Holborn Court, now known as South Square. A hundred years later additions were made, and in 1883 a new Library building was added, which is entered separately from the internal angle of South Square, and which fronts externally upon the then newly-made Gray’s Inn Road. The Library boasts a small but valuable collection of manuscripts, including that of Bracton’s ‘De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ.’
The old Hall was rebuilt in 1556. It follows the usual plan of a sixteenth-century Hall, having a raised dais and ‘high’ table at the east end, and the characteristic Tudor bay window on the north side. A very handsome oak screen, richly carved with Renaissance ornament, and divided into round arched bays by Ionic columns, conceals the vestibule. Above the enriched cartouche frieze of the Screen is an open and carved balustrade, extremely handsome, though of later date, which forms a front to the Minstrel Gallery. A glazed lantern in the centre of the Hall indicates the ancient louvre. A very fine open timber roof of the hammer-beam type covers this charming room, and harmonizes with the eighteenth-century oak panelling, which lines the walls, and is decorated with the arms of the Treasurers. A large traceried window over the Minstrel Gallery, five mullioned and transomed windows on the south side, and four similar windows, in addition to the large bay window, on the north, adequately light the Hall. Many of the windows contain fine heraldic glass, with escutcheons of famous members of the Society.[63] On the walls of the Hall hang portraits of Kings Charles I. and II., and James II., Sir Nicholas Bacon and Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, Baron Verulam, Lord Coke, Sir Christopher Yelverton (1602), Sir John Turton (1689), Lord Raymond, Chief Justice (1725), Sir James Eyre (1787), Sir John Hullock (1823), Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, etc. But the chief treasure is the portrait of Queen Elizabeth, hung above the dais, which was presented to the Society by Henry Griffith, one of the Masters of the Bench.
The exterior of the Hall was sadly ruined by the Goths, or Vandals, of 1826. The walls and gables of dark red brick, ornamented with brick battlements, and relieved by labels and mullions of stone, were, like those of the Chapel, rendered hideous by the stucco madness of the age; mean modern battlements were added; slate was substituted for the warm red tiles of the old roof; and a wooden lantern of new and feeble design placed instead of the octangular wooden lantern, with a leaded cupola, which rose from the centre of the roof. More recently the stucco disfigurations have been removed, and the old red-brick buttresses and walls with the stone labels have been happily revealed again.
There is a tradition in the Inn that the Screen which we have mentioned, and also some of the dining-tables now used in the Hall, were given to the Society by Queen Elizabeth. At dinner on Grand Day in each term ‘the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of good Queen Bess’ is still solemnly drunk in Hall. Certainly and happily this Hall, one of the most venerable and most beautiful of all the Halls in London, remains very much, as regards the interior, what it was in the days of the Virgin Queen.
There is another legend which connects the name of good Queen Bess with this Hall. It is said that Her Majesty was present at the performance in Gray’s Inn Hall of the masque, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ under the stage management of Shakespeare. There is no intrinsic improbability about this. Though the Pension Book does not record any visit of Elizabeth to Gray’s Inn, the nature of the entries is such that omission therefrom cannot be said to prove the non-occurrence of an event. Francis Bacon, who was made a Bencher in 1586, and was elected Treasurer in 1590, was a persona grata at Court, and not only took a delight in the preparation of pageantries, but also knew Shakespeare well. It is, therefore, quite likely that Queen Elizabeth visited the Inn on the occasion of the production of a masque by Shakespeare.[64] It is at least certain that in February, 1587, eight Members of Gray’s Inn, acting apparently with the approval of the Bench, produced a play called ‘The Misfortunes of Arthur’ for the entertainment of Queen Elizaabeth at Greenwich while Her Majesty was visiting the fair. It was apparently in connection with this play that Bacon, being then Reader of Gray’s Inn, wrote to Lord Burleigh as follows: ‘There are a dozen gentlemen of Gray’s Inn that, out of the honour which they bear to your Lordship and my Lord Chamberlain, to whom at their last masque they were so much bounden, are ready to furnish a masque: wishing it were in their power to perform it according to their minds.’[65]
The Benchers and Students of Gray’s Inn indulged in the Christmas Saturnalia of Masques and Revels with as great, or even greater, zest than the other Societies of Lawyers. And Bacon, philosopher, statesman, and courtier, was by no means backward in his enjoyment of ‘Masques and Triumphs.’ ‘These things are but toys,’ he wrote, ‘but since Princes will have such things, it is better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost.’ And accordingly he devoted some of his abundant energy to superintending the festivities in his own Inn, and even to assisting in the composition of some of the ‘Triumphs.’