One of the customs which used to be observed so late as the reign of Charles I. in the creation of sergeants, was for the new dignitary to go in procession to St. Paul's, and there to choose his pillar, as it was expressed. This ceremony is supposed to have originated in the ancient practice of the lawyers taking each his station at one of the pillars in the cathedral, and there waiting for clients. The legal sage stood, it is said, with pen in hand, and dexterously noted down the particulars of every man's case on his knee.
Clifford's Inn, leading out of Sergeants' Inn into Fleet Street and Fetter Lane, is so called from the noble family of De Clifford, who granted it to the students-at-law in the reign of Edward III. The word inn (Saxon, chamber), though now applied only to law places, and the better sort of public-houses in which travellers are entertained, formerly signified a great house, mansion, or family palace. So Lincoln's Inn, the mansion of the Earls of Lincoln; Gray's Inn, of the Lords Gray, &c. The French still use the word hôtel in the same sense. Inn once made as splendid a figure in our poetry, as the palaces of Milton:
"Now whenas Phœbus, with his fiery waine,
Unto his inne began to draw apace;"[109]
says Spenser; and his disciple Browne after him:
"Now had the glorious sun tane up his inne."[110]
There are three things to notice in Clifford's Inn: its little bit of turf and trees; its quiet; and its having been the residence of Robert Pultock, author of the curious narrative Peter Wilkins, with its Flying Women. Who he was, is not known; probably a barrister without practice; but he wrote an amiable and interesting book. As to the sudden and pleasant quiet in this little inn, it is curious to consider what a small remove from the street produces it. But even in the back room of a shop in the main street, the sound of the carts and carriages becomes wonderfully deadened to the ear; and a remove, like Clifford's Inn, makes it remote or nothing.
The garden of Clifford's Inn forms part of the area of the Rolls, so called from the records kept there, in rolls of parchment. It is said to have been the house of an eminent Jew, forfeited to the crown; that is to say, it was most probably taken from him, with all that it contained, by Henry III., who made it a house for converts from the owner's religion. These converted Jews, most likely none of the best of their race (for board and lodging are not arguments to the scrupulous), appear to have been so neglected, that the number of them soon came to nothing, and Edward III. gave the place to the Court of Chancery to keep its records in. There is a fine monument in the chapel to a Dr. Young, one of the Masters, which, according to Vertue, was executed by Torregiano, who built the splendid tomb in Henry VII.'s Chapel. Sir John Trevor, infamous for bribery and corruption, also lies here. "Wisely," says Pennant, "his epitaph is thus confined: 'Sir J. T. M.R. 1717.' "Some other Masters," he adds, "rest within the walls; among them Sir John Strange, but without the quibbling line,
'Here lies an honest lawyer, that is Strange.'"