Let us cull a few Temple anecdotes from various ages:—
In November, 1819, Erskine, in the House of Lords, speaking upon Lord Lansdowne's motion for an inquiry into the state of the country, condemned the conduct of the yeomanry at the "Manchester massacre." "By an ordinary display of spirit and resolution," observed the brilliant egotist to his brother peers (who were so impressed by his complacent volubility and good-humoured self-esteem, that they were for the moment ready to take him at his own valuation), "insurrection may be repressed without violating the law or the constitution. In the riots of 1780, when the mob were preparing to attack the house of Lord Mansfield, I offered to defend it with a small military force; but this offer was unluckily rejected. Afterwards, being in the Temple when the rioters were preparing to force the gate and had fired several times, I went to the gate, opened it, and showed them a field-piece, which I was prepared to discharge in case the attack was persisted in. They were daunted, fell back, and dispersed."
Judge Burrough (says Mr. Jeaffreson, in his "Law and Lawyers") used to relate that when the Gordon Rioters besieged the Temple he and a strong body of barristers, headed by a sergeant of the Guards, were stationed in Inner Temple Lane, and that, having complete confidence in the strength of their massive gate, they spoke bravely of their desire to be fighting on the other side. At length the gate was forced. The lawyers fell into confusion and were about to beat a retreat, when the sergeant, a man of infinite humour, cried out in a magnificent voice, "Take care no gentleman fires from behind." The words struck awe into the assailants and caused the barristers to laugh. The mob, who had expected neither laughter nor armed resistance, took to flight, telling all whom they met that the bloody-minded lawyers were armed to the teeth and enjoying themselves. The Temple was saved. When these Gordon Rioters filled London with alarm, no member of the junior bar was more prosperous and popular than handsome Jack Scott, and as he walked from his house in Carey Street to the Temple, with his wife on his arm, he returned the greetings of the barristers, who, besides liking him for a good fellow, thought it prudent to be on good terms with a man sure to achieve eminence. Dilatory in his early as well as his later years, Scott left his house that morning half an hour late. Already it was known to the mob that the Templars were assembling in their college, and a cry of "The Temple! kill the lawyers!" had been raised in Whitefriars and Essex Street. Before they reached the Middle Temple gate Mr. and Mrs. Scott were assaulted more than once. The man who won Bessie Surtees from a host of rivals and carried her away against the will of her parents and the wishes of his own father, was able to protect her from serious violence. But before the beautiful creature was safe within the Temple her dress was torn, and when at length she stood in the centre of a crowd of excited and admiring barristers, her head was bare and her ringlets fell loose upon her shoulders. "The scoundrels have got your hat, Bessie," whispered John Scott; "but never mind—they have left you your hair."
In Lord Eldon's "Anecdote Book" there is another gate story amongst the notes on the Gordon Riots. "We youngsters," says the aged lawyer, "at the Temple determined that we would not remain inactive during such times; so we introduced ourselves into a troop to assist the military. We armed ourselves as well as we could, and next morning we drew up in the court ready to follow out a troop of soldiers who were on guard. When, however, the soldiers had passed through the gate it was suddenly shut in our faces, and the officer in command shouted from the other side, 'Gentlemen, I am much obliged to you for your intended assistance; but I do not choose to allow my soldiers to be shot, so I have ordered you to be locked in.'" And away he galloped.
The elder Colman decided on making the younger one a barrister; and after visits to Scotland and Switzerland, the son returned to Soho Square, and found that his father had taken for him chambers in the Temple, and entered him as a student at Lincoln's Inn, where he afterwards kept a few terms by eating oysters. Upon this Mr. Peake notes:—"The students of Lincoln's Inn keep term by dining, or pretending to dine, in the hall during the term time. Those who feed there are accommodated with wooden trenchers instead of plates, and previously to the dinner oysters are served up by way of prologue to the play. Eating the oysters, or going into the hall without eating them, if you please, and then departing to dine elsewhere, is quite sufficient for term-keeping." The chambers in King's Bench Walk were furnished with a tent-bedstead, two tables, half-a-dozen chairs, and a carpet as much too scanty for the boards as Sheridan's "rivulet of rhyme" for its "meadow of margin." To these the elder Colman added £10 worth of law books which had been given to him in his own Lincoln's Inn days by Lord Bath; then enjoining the son to work hard, the father left town upon a party of pleasure.
Colman had sent his son to Switzerland to get him away from a certain Miss Catherine Morris, an actress of the Haymarket company. This answered for a time, but no sooner had the father left the son in the Temple than he set off with Miss Morris to Gretna Green, and was there married, in 1784; and four years after, the father's sanction having been duly obtained, they were publicly married at Chelsea Church.
In the same staircase with Colman, in the Temple, lived the witty Jekyll, who, seeing in Colman's chambers a round cage with a squirrel in it, looked for a minute or two at the little animal, which was performing the same operation as a man in the treadmill, and then quietly said, "Ah, poor devil! he is going the Home Circuit;" the locality where it was uttered—the Temple—favouring this technical joke.
On the morning young Colman began his studies (December 20, 1784) he was interrupted by the intelligence that the funeral procession of the great Dr. Johnson was on its way from his late residence, Bolt Court, through Fleet Street, to Westminster Abbey. Colman at once threw down his pen, and ran forth to see the procession, but was disappointed to find it much less splendid and imposing than the sepulchral pomp of Garrick five years before.
Dr. Dibdin thus describes the Garden walks of the last century:—"Towards evening it was the fashion for the leading counsel to promenade during the summer months in the Temple Gardens. Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin small-clothes and silk stockings, at this time constituted the usual evening dress. Lord Erskine, though a great deal shorter than his brethren, somehow always seemed to take the lead, both in place and in discourse, and shouts of laughter would frequently follow his dicta."
Ugly Dunning, afterwards the famous Lord Ashburton, entered the Middle Temple in 1752, and was called four years later, in 1756. Lord Chancellor Thurlow used to describe him wittily as "the knave of clubs."