The gardens open by a handsome gate of wrought iron into Field Court, which is westward of Gray's Inn Square. Here Bacon planted the trees, and enjoyed the view northward, then all open, from a summer-house which was only removed about 1754. Bacon lived in Coney Court, destroyed by fire in 1678, which looked on the garden.
Among the names of eminent men which occur to the memory in Gray's Inn, we must mention a tradition which makes Chief Justice Gascoigne a student here. More real is Thomas Cromwell, the terrible Vicar-General of Henry VIII. Sir Thomas Gresham was a member of the Inn, as was his contemporary Camden, the antiquary. Lord Burghley and his second son, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, were both members, it is said, but certainly Burghley. The list of casual inhabitants is almost inexhaustible, being swelled by the heroes of many novels, actually or entirely fictitious. Shakespeare was said to have played in the hall. Bradshaw, who presided at the trial of Charles I., was a bencher; and so was Holt, the Chief Justice of William III. More eminent than either, perhaps, was Sir Samuel Romilly, whose sad death in 1818 caused universal regret. Pepys mentions the walks, and observed the fashionable beauties after church one Sunday in May, 1662. Sir Roger de Coverley is placed on the terrace by Addison, and both Dryden, Shadwell, and other old dramatists speak of the gardens. It was at Gray's Inn Gate—the old gate into Portpool Lane—that Jacob Tonson, the great bookseller and publisher of the eighteenth century, had his shop.
The district northward of Gray's Inn needs very little comment. Great St. James Street is picturesque, with eighteenth-century doorways and carved brackets; the tenants of the houses are nearly all solicitors. Little St. James Street is insignificant and diversified by mews. In Strype's plan the rectangle formed by these two streets is marked "Bowling Green"; in one corner is "the Cockpitt."
Bedford Row is a very quiet, broad thoroughfare lined by eighteenth-century houses of considerable height and size, which for the most part still retain their noble staircases and well-proportioned rooms. Nearly every house is cut up into chambers. Abernethy, the great surgeon, formerly lived in this street, and Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, was born here; Bishop Warburton, the learned theologian and writer of the eighteenth century, and Elizabeth, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, are also said to have been among the residents. Ralph, the author of "Publick Buildings," admired it prodigiously, naming it one of the finest streets in London.
Red Lion Square took its name from a very well-known tavern in Holborn, one of the largest and most notable of the old inns. There is a modern successor, a Red Lion public-house, at the corner of Red Lion Street. To the ancient inn the bodies of the regicides were brought the night before they were dragged on hurdles to be exposed at Tyburn. This gave rise to a tradition, which still haunts the spot, that some of these men, including Cromwell, were buried in the Square, and that dummy bodies were substituted to undergo the ignominy at Tyburn.
There was for many years in the centre of the Square an obelisk with the inscription, "Obtusum Obtusioris Ingenii Monumentum Quid me respicis viator? Vade." And an attempt has been made to read the mysterious inscription as a Cromwellian epitaph. Pennant says that in his time the obelisk had recently vanished, which gives the date of destruction about 1780.
The Square was built about 1698, and is curiously laid out, with streets running diagonally from the corners as well as rectangularly from the sides. It had formerly a watch-house at each corner, as well as the obelisk in the centre. It is at present lined by brick houses of uniform aspect and unequal heights, with here and there a conspicuously modern building. The centre is laid out as a public garden, and forms a green and pleasant oasis in a very poor district.
St. John the Evangelist's Church, of red brick, designed by Pearson, stands at the south-west corner. It was built 1876-1878, and is very conspicuous, with two pointed towers and a handsome, deeply-recessed east window. Next door is the clergy house. There are in the Square various associations and societies, including the Mendicity Society, Indigent Blind Visiting Society, St. Paul's Hospital, and others. Milton had a house which overlooked Red Lion Fields, the site of the Square, and Jonas Hanway, traveller and philanthropist, also a voluminous writer, but who will be best remembered as the first man in England to carry an umbrella, died here in 1786. Sharon Turner, historian, came here after his marriage in 1795, and Lord Chief Justice Raymond, who held his high office in the reign of the first and second Georges, lived in the Square. But a later association will, perhaps, be more interesting to most people: for about three years previously to 1859 Sir E. Burne-Jones and William Morris lived in rooms at No. 17, before either was married.
Of the surrounding streets, those at the south-east and north-east angles are the most quaint. An old house with red tiles stands at each corner, and the remaining houses, though not so picturesque, are of ancient date. The streets are mere flagged passages lined by open stalls and little shops.
Kingsgate Street is so named because it had a gate at the end through which the King used to pass to Newmarket. It is mentioned by Pepys, who under date March 8, 1669, records that the King's coach was upset here, throwing out Charles himself, the Dukes of York and Monmouth, and Prince Rupert, who were "all dirt, but no hurt." Near the end of this street in Holborn was the Vine Inn, important as having kept alive the only reference in Domesday Book to this district, "a vineyard in Holborn" belonging to the Crown.