Another Gateway by ‘Jockey Fields,’ in Theobald’s Road, leads past Raymond Buildings, the same kind of ugly, unabashed, stock-brick barracks as Verulam Buildings, and dating from the same period. Crude and unpleasing as these dull blocks are to behold, they have the great advantage of being very pleasant to live in, for they line and look out upon the Gardens which the great Philosopher laid out. Raymond Buildings end in Field Court, which in turn adjoins South Square. One side of Field Court is formed by the iron railings and fine iron Gateway (1723) which terminate the Gardens. Square stone gate-posts carry the Griffin of the Inn. For the device of Gray’s Inn is a Griffin, or, in a field sable. Within this Gate a broad avenue of plane-trees, flanked by grassy lawns and terraces, leads to a green earth-work terrace at the northern end of the gardens. This terrace was probably constructed with the intention of shutting out the view of the squalid houses that had begun to spring up in that direction.
James Spedding records that Raleigh, just before his last disastrous voyage to the New World, had a long conversation with Bacon in those Gardens. And it is said that Bacon planted here a ‘catalpa tree,’ very likely brought home by Raleigh, which still survives, and is certainly one of the oldest in England. This is the sprawling, senile tree, tottering to its grave with the aid of a dozen propping sticks, which forms a striking feature upon the left-hand side of the path, looking from the Gateway.
Bacon’s love of gardening is breathed in every line of his delightful Essay upon Gardens. ‘God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks.’ And it appears probable that the Gardens of Gray’s Inn were laid out under his direction in 1597 and the following years. For in 1597 the Society ordered ‘that the summe of £7 15s. 4d., due to Mr. Bacon for planting of trees in the walkes, be paid next terme.’ In the following year a further supply was ordered ‘of more yonge elme trees in the places of such as are decayed, and that a new Rayle and quicksett hedge bee set uppon the upper walke at the good discretion of Mr. Bacon and Mr. Wilbraham, soe that the charges thereof do not exceed the sum of seventy pounds.’ And, this limit having apparently been carefully observed, in 1600, £60 6s. 8d. was paid to Mr. Bacon ‘for money disbursed about the Garnishing of the Walkes.’
There is also record of a Summer-house erected by Bacon ‘upon a small mount’ in the Gardens, which bore a Latin inscription to the effect that Francis Bacon erected it in memory of Jeremy Bettenham, formerly Rector of the Inn, in the year 1609. It was destroyed in the eighteenth century.
The rooks which nest in the trees of Gray’s Inn Gardens, and which fare sumptuously upon the fragments of food daily offered to them by the residents in the Chambers of Gray’s Inn, made their first appearance when the elms on the Chesterfield property in May Fair were felled. They appear to have driven out a pair of carrion crows which had built here time out of mind, and whose ancestors may well have looked down upon the author of the ‘Novum Organum,’ as he walked in those quiet alleys with his friend, or mused as he rested on the seat which was so callously destroyed a century and a half ago.[70]
The principal entrance to the Gardens was from Fullwood’s Rents, and, when coffee-drinking first came into vogue, Coffee-Houses sprang up here, and reaped a rich harvest from the crowds who made of Gray’s Inn Gardens a fashionable and popular promenade.
For Gray’s Inn Walks became as fashionable a resort in the seventeenth century as Merton Gardens at Oxford in the eighteenth, and when Pepys’ wife was ‘making some clothes,’ he took her here to observe the fashions. And Sir Roger de Coverley loved to pace the green terrace of Gray’s Inn.
The figure of the great Philosopher overshadows all others at Gray’s Inn, but the Society can boast a long line of members distinguished in Politics, the Law and Literature. Sir Philip Sidney was a Member of this Inn; so were John Hampden and John Pym, and Thomas Cromwell became an Ancient in 1534.
Sir William Gascoigne, Chief Justice 1400, is claimed by both Gray’s Inn and the Middle Temple. The former can at any rate point to Gascoigne’s arms in the bay-window of the Hall.
George Gascoigne, the poet, William Camden, and William Dugdale, the great and learned antiquaries, were all members of Gray’s Inn. Among the poets who resided here are George Chapman, Samuel Butler, John Cleveland, Oliver Goldsmith, and Robert Southey, who entered the Inn in 1797. Cobbett dwelt here for a season, and another ‘Rymer’ in the author of the ‘Fœdera.’ Dr. Kenealy, who defended ‘the Claimant,’ was the last barrister to have business Chambers here, the tide of legal business having flowed down Chancery Lane. Gray’s Inn can boast a Royal Bencher in the person of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, who, by a ‘Special Pension’ in 1881, was admitted a Member, called to the Bar, and elected a Bencher in one day.