At five or half-past five o'clock, the barristers, students and other members, in their gowns, having assembled in the hall, the Benchers enter in procession to the dais; the steward strikes the table three times, grace is said by the treasurer or senior Bencher present, and the dinner commences; the Benchers observe somewhat more style at their table than the other members do at theirs; the general repast is a tureen of soup, a joint of meat, a tart, and cheese, to each mess consisting of four persons; each mess is also allowed a bottle of port-wine. The dinner over, the Benchers, after grace, retire to their own apartments. At the Inner Temple, on May 29, a gold cup of "sack" is handed to each member, who drinks to the happy restoration of Charles II. At Gray's Inn a similar custom prevails, but the toast is the memory of Queen Elizabeth. The Inner Temple Hall waiters are called "panniers," from "pan-arii" who attended the Knights Templars. At both Temples the form of the dinner resembles the repasts of the military monks; the Benchers on the dais representing the "knights;" the barristers the "freres," or brethren; and the students, the "novices." The Middle Temple still bears the arms of the Knights Templars, viz., the figure of the Holy Lamb.
The entrance expenses at the Inner Temple (the average of the costs at other Inns), are £40 11s. 5d., of which £25 1s. 3d. is for the stamp; on call, £82 12s., of which £52 2s. 6d. is for the stamp; total, £123 3s. The commons bill is about £12 annually.
Of Clement's Inn in the Strand which is just the same Clement's Inn as it was when Shakspeare lived, that poet speaks as follows in the second part of Henry IV.:
Shallow. I was once of Clement's Inn, where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet.
Silence. You were called lusty Shallow, then, cousin.
Shallow. By the mass, I was called any thing; and I would have done any thing indeed, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and Black George Barnes of Staffordshire, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns of Court again.
Then Shallow tells of Sir John Falstaff breaking "Skogan's head at the court-gate when he was a crack not thus high; and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray's Inn."
Shallow. Oh, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the Windmill in St. George's Fields?
Falstaff. We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
Shallow. I remember at Mile-End Green (when I lay at Clement's Inn), I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's Show.