THE GREAT HALL OF THE ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE
Street’s noble Gothic Hall, through which the Judges pass in dignified procession at the opening of the Courts after the Long Vacation.
in the course of the recent Strand improvements. Clement’s Inn took its name probably from ‘a fountain called St. Clement’s Well,’ which Stow describes (1603) as ‘North from the parish Church of S. Clement’s, and neare unto an Inn of Chancerie called Clement’s Inne; [it] is faire curbed square with hard stone, kept cleane for common use, and is alwayes full.’
The picturesque Queen Anne buildings of the Inn have disappeared, and in their place some more pretentious flats and offices have been erected. They looked out, until the beginning of 1909, upon a green open space, some two acres in extent, bounded by the Law Courts, Carey Street, and the Strand. A road runs under the Judges’ Rooms in the Law Courts from the Strand to a flight of steps, which lead up to Carey Street beneath ornamental arches. This space was intended to be covered by the Law Courts, according to the original design. But the estimates were cut down, and the block which was meant to cover this space was sacrificed. The inconvenience which has resulted for lawyers and litigants ever since has been the gain of the less litigious public. For, thanks to the generosity of the late Mr. W. H. Smith, the vacant place was laid out as a lawn and flower-garden, and has long formed a refreshing strip of greensward in the heart of this busy centre of London. Two-thirds of it have now been sacrificed, for the pressing need of more accommodation is at last to be met by the extension of the Law Courts, and the erection of four new Courts, which have been begun at the north-west end of this plot. The new building, designed to harmonize with Street’s somewhat bastard Gothic building, will be connected with it by a bridge of three arches spanning the walk between Carey Street and the Strand.
Clifford’s Inn still survives. It can be approached either from Chancery Lane, through Serjeants’ Inn, from Fetter Lane, or from Fleet Street. Out of the roar and bustle of that busy thoroughfare a passage leads up past the porch of St. Dunstan’s Church. On the north side of a tiny Court, from which an archway leads into a larger one, stands a tiny Hall, with a large clock and windows full of heraldic glass, amongst which the chequers of the Cliffords are conspicuous. This Hall in its present shape, re-cased and transmogrified, dates from 1797, but a fourteenth-century arch at the end of it points to pristine beauty.
A few separate houses are dotted irregularly about on the opposite side. But the chief charm of Clifford’s Inn lies in the green grass space and shady trees, a garden bounded by railings, and on two sides by old brick buildings, with deep cornices and tiled roofs, which forms so grateful a view from the interior of the Record Office, or from the Court of Serjeants’ Inn.
The Inn is called after Robert de Clifford, whose widow (1344) let the messuage to students of the law for £10 per annum. It was acquired by the Society at a rental of £4 towards the end of the fifteenth century. The Society was composed of the Principal and Rulers, and the Juniors or ‘Kentish Men.’ It would be of interest, if for no other reason, because Coke and Selden once resided here.
It was in Clifford’s Inn that Sir Matthew Hale and the other Commissioners sat to deal with the cases which arose after the Great Fire of London and the questions of boundaries and rebuilding.
Clifford’s Inn was always reckoned, except by its members, a dependency of the Inner Temple. No Inn of Court, at any rate, acquired its lease or freehold. Clifford’s Inn paid its own way, had its own customs, its great days, and peculiar rules. The most interesting of its old customs was a kind of grace, which used to be performed after dinner by a member of what was mysteriously called the Kentish Mess. The Chairman of this Mess, for which a special table was always provided, after bowing gravely to the Principal, took from a servitor four small loaves joined together in the shape of a cross. These he dashed upon the table before him three times, amid profound silence. The bread was then passed down to the last man in the Kentish Mess, who carried it from the Hall. A number of old women used to wait at the buttery to receive these crumbs which had fallen from the rich man’s table. The exact significance of the symbolism of this performance is not clear. It is probably the usual mixture of Pagan rites and Christian observance. Antiquaries, indeed, have suggested that ‘this singular custom typifies offerings to Ceres, who first taught mankind the use of laws, and originated those peculiar ornaments of civilization, their expounders, the lawyers.’[77]