Of the Inns attached to the Middle Temple, the Strand, or Chester’s Inn, so-called ‘for the nearnesse to the Bishop of Chester’s house’ (Stow), stood near the Church of St. Mary le Strand, without Temple Bar. It was pulled down by the Protector, Duke of Somerset, ‘who in place thereof raised that large and beautiful house, but yet unfinished, called Somerset house.’
Lastly, there was New Inn. In St. George’s Lane, near the Old Bailey, was an Inn of Chancery, whence the Society, Stow tells us, moved to ‘a common hostelry, called of the sign Our Lady Inne, not far from Clement’s Inne, and which they hold by the name of the New Inn, paying therefor £6 rent, for more cannot be gotten of them, and much less will they be put from it.’ (See [40.])
This ‘New Inn,’ which lay west of Clement’s Inn, in Wych Street, has also disappeared. Here Sir Thomas More studied prior to his being admitted to Lincoln’s Inn.
Next to Serjeants’ Inn in Chancery Lane, and adjoining the garden of Clifford’s Inn, stood the House of the Converted Jews, founded by Henry III., in place of a Jew’s house forfeited to him (1233).
There were gathered a great number of converted Jews and Infidels, who were ‘ordayned and appointed, under an honest rule of life, sufficient maintenance,’ and who lived under a learned Christian appointed to govern them. As was the case, however, with the similar House of Converts founded by Henry at Oxford, when all Jews were banished from the Kingdom in 1290, the number of converts naturally decayed, and the House was accordingly annexed by Patent to William Burstall, Clerk, Custos Rotulorum, or Keeper of the Rolls of the Chancery, in 1377. ‘This first Maister of the Rolles was sworne in Westminster Hall at the Table of Marble Stone; since the which time, that house hath beene commonly called the Rolles in Chancerie Lane.’ So the invaluable Stow, who adds that Jewish converts continued none the less to be relieved there.
Henry III. also built for his Converts ‘a fair Church,’ afterwards ‘used and called the Chapel for the custody of Rolls and Records of Chancerie.’ The fabric of Rolls Chapel, after being frequently rebuilt, had ceased to have any merit. It was demolished when the recent additions to the Record Office were made (1895), and when to the vast Gothic Tower, designed by Pennethorne, the section facing Chancery Lane was added. This building, in spite of its feeble minarets and decadent, nondescript ornamentation, often, by virtue of its mass and handsome material, looks extremely effective, especially when London sun, shining through London mist, dimly suffuses its pearly domes with delicate pinks and yellows.
Upon the site of Rolls Chapel a Museum of equal size has been built, which the present Deputy Keeper of the Records, Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte, has made so interesting a feature of our National Archives. In this Museum of the Public Record Office, three large monuments, once in the Rolls Chapel, have been re-erected, two of them in their former positions. They are of great interest and beauty. Chief among them is the Tomb of Dr. Young, who was Dean of York and Master of the Rolls (died 1516). This beautiful terra-cotta monument is ascribed to Torrigiano, who made the splendid tomb in Henry VII.’s Chapel. Here, too, are the monuments, in alabaster, of Sir Richard Allington (died 1561), and of Edward Bruce, Lord Kinlosse, Master of the Rolls, who died in 1611.
Amongst other Masters who were buried in Rolls Chapel, Pennant mentions Sir John Strange, but without the quibbling line—
‘Here lies an honest lawyer, that is Strange.’
Bishop Butler’s ‘Sermons at the Rolls’ and the fame of Bishop Atterbury and Bishop Burnet keep alive the memory of the office of ‘Preacher at the Rolls,’ an office held also by the late Dr. Brewer, whose name is famous in the annals of historical research. As to Bishop Burnet, the story runs that, in 1684, he preached here upon the text, ‘Save me from the lion’s mouth, for Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns’ (Ps. xxii. 21), and was promptly dismissed for a sermon supposed to be levelled at the Royal Arms.