the Temple

the Temple

On the south side of Fleet Street, extending south to the Victorla Embankment, and from Temple Lane east to the City boundary west, in Farringdon Ward Without (P.O. Directory).

It consists of two Societies, known respectively as the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple, being two of the four Inns of Court established from early times for the study and practice of the law. Originally formed one Society, the separation having taken place in the time of Henry VI. First mention of Inner Temple 1440, both mentioned 1451 (Paston Letters).

The two Societies are of equal importance and distinction, entirely independent of each other, and are presided over by different bodies of Benchers and have their separate Halls, Libraries, etc.

The site was originally occupied by the chief house of the Knights Templars in England, erected temp. H. II. and called the New Temple to distinguish it from the first house of the Order in London erected near Holborn Bars and known as the Old Temple.

The Order was founded c. 1118 for the rescue and preservation of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple from the hands of the Saracens, and the house in Holborn now covered by Southampton Buildings was erected shortly after this date.

The circular foundations of the old church were found in the course of excavations for the London and County Bank, Nos. 324–5 Holborn.

In a MS. c. 1115–30 relating to lands of St. Paul in London preserved among the archives of the Dean and Chapter, mention is made of the "Old Temple." It is the last entry in the MS. and in a later handwriting than the rest of the MS.

On what occasion the Templars obtained the grant of the new site on the Fleet does not appear, but from charters dated not later than 1162 it appears that they received from Henry II. a grant of land on the Fleet, together with the course of the water to make a mill there, so that the foundation of this second house was probably prior to that date. Moreover, by a charter of the same date, the grant was made to the church of St. Mary of Lincoln and Bishop Robert of houses which belonged to the brethren of the Temple in the parish of St. Andrew of Holborn, with the chapel and garden, while in the 16th century the house of John bishop of Lincoln in Holborn was still designated the Old Temple (L. and P. H. VIII. VI. 274, and Cott. MS. Vesp. E. XVI. f. 14b.).

In course of time, possibly out of jealousy of their enormous wealth and influence, grave abuses were alleged against the Order, with the result that it was finally dissolved by decree of the Council of Vienna in 1324 and the lands of the Order were granted to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem.

The Order was suppressed in England as early as the 8th Ed. II. and its possessions declared forfeited to the Crown. In the same year a grant of the manor of the Temple was made to Thomas, earl of Lancaster (Cal. P.R. Ed. II. 1313–17, p. 184).

After his attainder it was bestowed on Adomar de Valence and afterwards on Hugh le Despenser (Cal. Charter Rolls, III. 203).

In 1324, after the decree above referred to, the King, at the instance of the Pope, made a grant of the site and manor to the Knights Hospitallers, who on their part gave permission to Hugh le Despenser to retain possession of the property.

There are some interesting details relating to the cemetery and cloisters in an Inq. p.m. Jo Ed. III.

The New Temple was burnt and its records destroyed in 1381, but from destruction by this and subsequent fires the beautiful round church and the old Halls have been preserved, and the church remains in its original style of architecture to the present day.

Stow says that the Hospitallers made a grant of the Temple to the students of the Common laws of England in the reign of Edward III., but owing to the destruction of the records above mentioned there is no deed in existence relating to this grant, and after the dissolution of the Monasteries in the time of Henry VIII., when the estates of the Hospitallers passed to the Crown, although the two Societies continued in undisturbed possession of the New Temple, yet no lease, grant, or other document appears to have been executed in their favour, and their title was for some time a precarious one. However, in the reign of James I., in 1608, they obtained a patent from the King confirming them in possession of the property and in the rights, franchises and privileges granted originally to the Templars and Hospitallers and enjoyed subsequently by the two legal Societies. These privileges included the right to hold a court leet, rights of sanctuary, etc.

In 1668–9 the privileges above mentioned were seriously challenged by the attempt of the Lord Mayor to assert his authority over the Temple precincts. The claim was energetically repudiated and one of the arguments adduced in support of the rights and privileges of the Societies was, that whilst the Charter of James I. to the City granted subsequently to that bestowed upon the Societies expressly confers upon the Lord Mayor jurisdiction over the precincts of Elackfriars, Whitefriars, Coldharbour, and Smithfield, no such jurisdiction over the Temple precincts was conferred by this grant.

This claim was again raised in 1678–9, but meeting with no greater success it was then definitely abandoned.

These privileges of sanctuary, when the restraints imposed by the monastic authority and discipline were removed, became greatly abused and their final abolition, 9 George I., came as a relief to the inhabitants of the privileged areas.

The Temple escaped complete destruction in the Great Fire, but King's Bench Office and Walk, Crown Office, Alienation Office, Exchequer Office, Fuller's Rents, Tanfield Court, Fig Tree Court, and the Master's House were destroyed.

Subsequently to the year 1666 two other serious outbreaks of fire occurred within the Temple precincts in 1677 and 1678, which destroyed many of the Courts and chambers and necessitated the rebuilding of most of them, so that the church and the two Halls, the Cloisters and a small chamber under the buttery, possibly a small refectory, alone preserve their original style and characteristics.

The Inner Temple occupies the eastern portion and the Middle Temple the western portion of the precincts, and the limits of the two estates are determined by a Deed of Partition made 1732 (Baylis, 59). The church serves for and is maintained by both Societies.

In common with the other Inns of Court certain Inns of Chancery were attached to the two Temples, viz. to the Inner Temple, Clifford's Inn, Clement's Inn, Lyon's Inn; to the Middle Temple, New Inn, and Strand Inn.

Among the Courts, etc., contained within the Temple precincts are the following: Kings Bench Walk, The Terrace, Crown Office Row, Fig Tree Court, Elm Court, Pump Court, Fountain Court, Tanfield Court, Garden Court, Brick Court, Essex Court, New Court, Middle Temple Lane, Inner Temple Lane, Temple Gardens, Goldsmith Buildings or Court, Hare Court, the Temple Church, Inner Temple Hall, and Middle Temple Hall.

Temple (The). A liberty or district between Fleet Street and the Thames, and so called from the Knights Templars, who made their first London habitation in Holborn, in 1118, and removed to Fleet Street, or the New Temple, 1184. Spenser alludes to this London locality in his beautiful "Prothalamion":—

                                          those bricky towres¹ The which on Themmes brode aged back doe ryde, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, There whylome wont the Templer Knights to byde, Till they decayd through pride.

At the downfall of the Templars, in 1313, the New Temple in Fleet Street was given by Edward II. to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whose tomb, in Westminster Abbey, has called forth the eulogistic criticism of the classic Flaxman. At the Earl of Pembroke's death in 1323 the property passed to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem [see St. John's Gate], by whom the Inner and Middle Temples were leased to the students of the Common Law, and the Outer Temple to Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, and Lord Treasurer, beheaded by the citizens of London in 1326. No change took place when the Temple property passed to the Crown at the dissolution of religious houses in the reign of Henry VIII., and the students of the two Inns of Court remained the tenants of the Crown till 1608, when James I. by letters patent conferred the two Temples on the Benchers of the two societies and their successors for ever. There are two edifices in the Temple specially worthy of a visit: the Temple Church (serving for both Temples), and the Middle Temple Hall.

The Temple Church was the church of the Knights Templars, and consists of two parts, the Round Church and the Choir. The Round Church (transition Norman work) was built in the year 1185, as an inscription in Saxon characters, formerly on the stonework over the little door next the cloister, recorded, and dedicated by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem; the Choir (pure Early English) was finished in 1240. The restorations and alterations, made 1839–1842, at a cost of £70,000, are in correct 12th and 13th century taste; but it is much to be lamented that the changes were of so sweeping a character that the interest of association was not regarded, and that the monuments to several great men (though architecturally out of place) were not suffered to remain in the arcades and compartments in which they were first erected. Many of these monuments were removed to the triforium. Observe.—Entrance doorway (very fine); two groups of monumental effigies, in Round Church, of Knights Templars, cross-legged (names unknown, at least very uncertain); the figure between the two columns on the south-east having a foliage-ornament about the cushion supporting the head, and the feet resting upon a lion, represents, it is said, William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1119), Earl Marshal and Protector of England during the minority of Henry III.; monument of white marble, left of the altar, to the learned Selden² (d. 1654; he was buried beneath); and in the triforium (ascended by a narrow staircase), the tombs of Plowden, the jurist; Richard Martin (d. 1618), to whom Ben Jonson dedicates his Poetaster; James Howell, the letter-writer (d. 1666); Edmund Gibbon.

My family arms are the same which were borne by the Gibbons of Kent in an age when the College of Heralds religiously guarded the distinctions of blood and name; a lion rampant, gardant, between three schallop shells argent, on a field azure. I should not, however, have been tempted to blazon my coat of arms were it not connected with a whimsical anecdote. About the reign of James I. the three harmless schallop shells were changed by Edmund Gibbon, Esq., into three ogresses, or female cannibals, with a design of stigmatising three ladies, his kinswomen, who had provoked him by an unjust lawsuit. But this singular mode of revenge, for which he obtained the sanction of Sir William Seager, king at arms, soon expired with its author; and on his own monument in the Temple Church the monsters vanish, and the three schallop shells resume their proper and hereditary place.—Gibbon.

The so-called Penitential Cell, off the corkscrew stairs leading to the gallery. In the burial-ground east of the Choir, and without the building, Oliver Goldsmith was buried, on April 9, 1774, at 5 o'clock in the evening. There is a coped gravestone with an inscription to his memory in the graveyard on the north side, but the exact place of his interment is unknown, although the inscription says "Here lies." Lord Chancellor Thurlow was buried with unusual pomp under the south aisle, September 1806.³ The Round was used as a place where lawyers received their clients, each occupying his particular post, like a merchant upon 'Change.

Face. Here's one from Captain Face, sir [to Surly],
Desires you meet him in the Temple Church
Some half hour hence, and upon earnest business.
Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Act ii. Sc. I.

Face. I have walk'd the Round
Till now, and no such thing.—Ibid., Act iii. Sc. 2.

And for advice 'twixt him and us he had made choice of a lawyer, a mercer, and a merchant, who that morning were appointed to meet him in the Temple Church. Middleton, Father Hubburd's Tales, 4to, 1604.

Retain all sorts of witnesses
That ply i' the Temples under trees,
Or walk the Round with Knights o' th' Posts
About the cross-legg'd knights their hosts;
Or wait for customers between
The pillar rows in Lincoln's Inn.—Hudibras, pt. iii. c. iii.

Courtin. I shall be ere long as greasy as an Alsatian bully; this flapping hat, pinned up on one side, with a sandy weather-beaten peruke, dirty linen, and to complete the figure, a long scandalous iron sword jarring at my heels. My companions the worthy Knights of the most noble order of the Post, your peripatetic philosophers of the Temple Walks.—Otway, The Soldier's Fortune, 4to, 1681.

Nor was this custom forgotten when the present cloisters were rebuilt, after the Great Fire of 1666.

I remember that after the fire of the Temple, it was considered whether the old cloister walks should be rebuilt, or rather improved into chambers; which latter had been for the benefit of the Middle Temple. But in regard it could not be done without the consent of the Inner houses, the Masters of the Middle houses waited upon the then Mr. Attorney Finch, to desire the concurrence of his society, upon a proposition of some benefit to be thrown in on his side. But Mr. Attorney would by no means give way to it, and reproved the Middle Templars very bitterly and eloquently upon the subject of students walking in evenings there, and putting cases "which," he said, "was done in his time, as mean and low as the buildings were then, however it comes," said he, "that such a benefit to students is now made so little account of."⁴ And thereupon the cloisters, by the order and disposition of Sir Christopher Wren, were built as they now stand.—North's Life of Lord Keeper Guildford, ed. 1826, vol. i. p. 27.

The preacher at the Temple is called Master of the Temple, and this was once an appointment of greater dignity and expectations than it is now.⁵ The "judicious" Hooker, author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, was for six years Master of the Temple "a place," says Izaak Walton, "which he accepted rather than desired." Travers, a disciple of Cartwright, the Nonconformist, was then lecturer; and Hooker, it was said, preached Canterbury in the forenoon, and Travers Geneva in the afternoon. The Benchers were divided; and Travers, being first silenced by the Archbishop, Hooker resigned and retired to the quiet parsonage of Boscombe to complete his great work, the Ecclesiastical Polity. In this church Archbishop Ussher preached the funeral sermon of the learned Selden. The organ was made by Father Schmydt, or Smith, in honourable competition with his great rival Renatus Harris. Blow and Purcell, then in their prime, performed on Father Smith's organ on appointed days; and till Harris's was heard every one believed that Smith's must be chosen. Harris employed Baptiste Draghi, organist to Queen Catherine, "to touch his organ," which brought it into favour; and thus the two continued vying with each other for near a twelvemonth. The decision at length was left to the notorious Judge Jeffreys, who decided in favour of Father Smith. Smith excelled in the diapason, or foundation stops; Harris principally in the reed stops. The choral services on a Sunday are well performed and well attended. The Round of the church is open to all, but the Choir is reserved for the Benchers, barristers, and students. Strangers are admitted by the introduction of a Bencher of either Temple. Shakespeare (or the writer of the First Part of King Henry VI.) has made the "Temple Gardens"—a fine open space, fronting the Thames—the place in which the distinctive badges (the white rose and red rose) of the houses of York and Lancaster were first assumed by their respective partisans.

Suffolk Within the Temple Hall we were too loud:
The garden here is more convenient.

Plantagenet. Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
Somerset. Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

Plantagenet. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
Somerset. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?

Warwick, This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Gardens,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
First Part of Henry VI., Act ii. Sc. 4.

It would be impossible to revive the scene in the supposed place of its origin, for such is the smoke and foul air of London that the commonest and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth a bud in the Temple Gardens, but these gardens have become the home of the chrysanthemum, and every year a fine exhibition of these flowers is to be seen here. The Temple is walled in on every side, and protected with gates. There is no poor-law within its precinct. [See Inner Temple Lane; Middle Temple Lane; King's Bench Walk; Paper Buildings; Hare Court; Elm Court; Ram Alley; Crown Office Row; Fig Tree Court; Brick Court.]

The Inner Temple is an Inn of Court, with three Inns of Chancery attached—Clifford's Inn, Clement's Inn, and Lyon's Inn, the latter now cleared away. The Gate House in Fleet Street, erected 5th of King James I., carries the feathers of Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I., in relief upon the front. It is now a hairdresser's, and is thus erroneously inscribed: "Formerly the Palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey." The greater part of the Inner Temple was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, the flames stopping within a very few yards of the Temple Church.

Eminent Members. Littleton (the famous judge). Sir Edward Coke. Sir Christopher Hatton. Lord Buckhurst (Lord High Treasurer). John Bradford ("But for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford"), admitted 1547. John Selden ("a long scabby-poled boy, but a good student," as Sir Giles Mompesson told Aubrey), removed from Clifford's Inn to the Inner Temple in May 1604. His chambers were in Paper Buildings [which see]. He was elected a Bencher in 1632. When he died in 1654 his executors wished to present his library to the Society, and with that view lodged it in some chambers in the King's Bench Walk, where it remained for five years without any arrangement being made for receiving it. It was then bestowed upon the Bodleian Library and welcomed with all due honour. Heneage Finch, Judge Jeffreys, Francis Beaumont (Beaumont and Fletcher), Lord Mansfield, William Browne (author of Britannia's Pastorals], William Cowper (the poet). The hall, a poor mock Gothic building as "restored" in 1816, was demolished in 1869, and the present more spacious hall erected in its place from the designs of Sydney Smirke, R.A. This is a substantial structure of Portland stone, Perpendicular in style, 94 feet long, 41 feet wide, and 40 feet high to the wall plate, and has an open oak roof resembling that of Westminster Hall. The fine oriel at the upper end is filled with heraldic painted glass. Under the north end is an ancient crypt, which has been carefully restored. In olden times the Inner Temple Hall was famous for its revels and banquets. The revels are over but the banquets are still given, and on Grand Days with much state and ceremony. When Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards Lord Chancellor Nottingham, was Reader of the Society of the Inner Temple, King Charles II. dined with him in Inner Temple Hall; an honour, it is said, never before granted by a King in this country. The last Reader who read was Sir William Whitelocke in 1684.⁶

The last revel in any of the Inns of Court was in the Inner Temple, held in honour of Mr. Talbot, when he took leave of that house, of which he was a bencher, on having the Great Seal delivered to him. A friend, who was present during the whole entertainment, obliged me with the following account, which, with some circumstances supplied by another gentleman then likewise present, seemed worth adding here, by way of comparison with those in former times, and as it may probably be the last of the kind:

"On the 2nd of February, 1733, the Lord Chancellor came into the Inner Temple Hall about two of the clock, preceded by the Master of the Revels (Mr. Wollaston), and followed by the Master of the Temple (Dr. Sherlock), then Bishop of Bangor, and by the Judges and Serjeants who had been members of that house. There was a very elegant dinner provided for them and the Lord Chancellor's officers; but the Barristers and Students of the house had no other dinner got for them than what is usual on all Grand Days; but each mess had a flask of claret, besides the common allowance of port and sack. Fourteen students waited on the Bench Table, among whom was Mr. Talbot, the Lord Chancellor's eldest son; and by their means any sort of provision was easily obtained from the upper table by those at the rest. A large gallery was built over the screen, and was filled with ladies, who came, for the most part, a considerable time before the dinner began; and the music was placed in the little gallery, at the upper end of the Hall, and played all dinner time.

"As soon as dinner was ended the play began, which was Love for Love, with the farce of The Devil To Pay. The actors who performed in them all came from the Haymarket, in chairs, ready dressed; and, as it was said, refused any gratuity for the trouble, looking upon the honour of distinguishing themselves on this occasion as sufficient.

"After the play the Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Temple, the Judges and Benchers, retired into their Parliament Chamber, and in about half an hour afterwards came into the Hall again, and a large ring was formed round the fireplace (but no fire nor embers were on it); then the Master of the Revels, who went first, took the Lord Chancellor by the right hand, and he with his left took Mr. J[ustice] Page, who, joined to the other Judges, Serjeants, and Benchers present, danced, or rather walked, round about the coal fire, according to the old ceremony, three times, during which they were aided in the figure of the dance by Mr. George Cooke, the Prothonotary, then upwards of 60; and all the time of the dance the ancient song, accompanied with music, was sung by one Tony Aston [an actor], dressed in a bar gown, whose father had been formerly Master of the Plea Office in the King's Bench.

"When this was over, the ladies came down from the gallery, went into the Parliament Chamber, and stayed about a quarter of an hour, while the Hall was putting in order; then they went into the Hall and danced a few minutes; country dances began about ten, and at twelve a very fine collation was provided for the whole company: from which they returned to dancing, which they continued as long as they pleased; and the whole day's entertainment was generally thought to be very genteelly and liberally conducted. The Prince of Wales honoured the performance with his company part of the time: he came into the music gallery wing about the middle of the play, and went away as soon as the farce of walking round the coal fire was over."—Wynne's Eunomus, ed. 1774, vol. iv. p. 104.

It was at a banquet at the Inner Temple Hall (July 6, 1846) that Brougham stole a famous joke of Dr. Arbuthnot's, and while eulogising Lyndhurst said, in allusion to Lord Campbell's presence, that "to an expiring Chancellor, Death was now armed with a new terror." Samuel Rogers had chambers in Paper Buildings [which see]. The reader will not forget Charles Lamb's delightful essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," the Inner Temple itself, "the most elegant spot in the metropolis," with its hall and library, garden, terrace, and fountain.

The Middle Temple is an Inn of Court, with two Inns of Chancery attached—New Inn and Strand Inn. The former alone remains. The entrance from Fleet Street is by a heavy red brick front with stone dressings, built in 1684, from the design of Sir Christopher Wren, in place of the old portal which Sir Amias Paulet, while Wolsey's prisoner in the gate-house of the Temple, "had re-edified very sumptuously; garnishing the same," says Cavendish, "on the outside thereof, with cardinal's hats and arms, and divers other devices, in so glorious a sort, that he thought thereby to have appeased his old unkind displeasure."

He [Wolsey] layed a fine upon Sir Amias to build the gate of the Middle Temple; the arms of Pawlet with the quarterings are in glass there to this day [1680]. The Cardinall's armes were, as the storie sayes, on the outside in stone, but time has long since defaced that, only you may still discerne the place; it was carv'd in a very mouldering stone.—Aubrey's Lives, vol. iii. p. 588.

The great hall of the Society, known as "Middle Temple Hall," was built in 1572, while Plowden, the well known jurist, was treasurer of the Inn. It is 100 feet long, 42 feet wide, and 47 feet high, and is one of the best specimens of an Elizabethan hall we possess. The roof, put up in 1575, open hammer-beam design with pendants, is the best Elizabethan roof in London. The screen, a very rich piece of Renaissance work, is said to have been formed in exact imitation of the Strand front of old Somerset House, but this is a vulgar error, like the tradition which relates that it was made of the spoils of the Spanish Armada, the records of the Society proving that it was set up thirteen years before the Armada put to sea. Observe.—Busts of Lords Eldon and Stowell, by Behnes. The portraits are chiefly copies, and not good. The exterior was dressed with stone, in wretched taste, in 1757. We first hear of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in connection with this fine old hall, a student of the Middle Temple, of the name of Manningham, making the following entry in his diary:—

February 2, 1601 [1601-1602]. At our feast we had a play called Twelve Night or what you will. Much like the Comedy of Errors; or Menechmi in Plautus; but most like and neere to that in Italian, called Inganni. Harl. MS., 5353.

Sir John Davies, the poet, whose Nosce Teipsum forms one of the glories of Queen Elizabeth's reign, was expelled the Society of the Middle Temple for thrashing his friend, Mr. Richard Martin (d. 1618), also a member of the Inn, during dinner-time, in the Middle Temple Hall. Davies was afterwards, on proper submission, re-admitted, and Martin is still remembered, not by his thrashing, but by Ben Jonson's noble dedication to him of his Poetaster. It deserves to be mentioned, in illustration of the revels at Christmas, which used to be held in the halls of the Inns of Court, that in taking up the floor of the Middle Temple Hall, about the year 1764, near one hundred pair of dice were found, which had dropt, on different occasions, through the chinks or joints of the boards. The dice were very small, at least one third less than those now in use. Members of this Inn are summoned to dinner during Term by sounding a horn.

Prince Henry. Jack, meet me to-morrow in the Temple Hall.
Shakespeare, First Part of Henry IV., Act iii. Sc. 1.

On Thursday, the 10th day of July, 1623, after our supper in the Middle Temple Hall ended, with another utter-barrister I argued a moot at the bench to the great satisfaction of such as heard me. Two gentlemen under the bar arguing at first in law French, bareheaded, as I did myself before I was called to the bar at the cupboard.—D'Ewes, vol. i. p. 232.

On Wensday the 23 of Febru. 1635, the Prince d'Amours gave a masque to the Prince Elector and his brother in the Middle Temple, wher the Queene [Henrietta Maria] was pleasd to grace the entertaynment, by putting of [off] majesty to putt on a citizen's habitt, and to sett upon the scaffold on the right hand amongst her subjects.—Sir H. Herbert (Shak. by Boswell, vol. iii. p. 237).

Manly. I hate this place [Westminster Hall] worse than a man that has inherited a Chancery Suit.

Freeman. Methinks 'tis like one of their halls in Christmas time, whither from all parts fools bring their money to try by the dice (not the worst judges) whether it shall be their own or no.—Wycherley, The Plain Dealer, 4to, 1676.

The Middle Temple Library, erected from the designs of Mr. H. R. Abraham, was opened by the Prince of Wales, October 31, 1861, on which occasion his Royal Highness was called to the Bar and admitted a Bencher of the Middle Temple. The Library is Collegiate Gothic in style, and a good building, but looks short and stilted from there being two floors of offices beneath the great hall. This, the Library proper, is a handsome room 86 feet long (with on oriel of 10 feet), 42 feet wide, and 63 feet high. It has seven tall windows on each side, a bay of five lights, overlooking the Thames, and a large window of seven lights on the north filled with heraldic glass. The open timber roof is after the model of that of Westminster Hall.

The regulations for admission, call to the Bar, etc., are similar to those of the other Inns of Court. [See Inns of Court.]

Eminent Members. Plowden; Sir Walter Raleigh (who calls himself "Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple" in his "Commendation" of Gascoigne's Steele Glas, circ. 1570); Sir Thomas Overbury; Sir John Davies, the poet; John Ford, the dramatist (admitted November 16, 1602); John Pym (admitted April 23, 1602); Lord Chancellor Clarendon (admitted in 1625, when his uncle, Sir Nicholas Hyde, was treasurer); Bulstrode Whitelocke; Ireton (Cromwell's son-in-law); Evelyn (admitted February 13, 1636); John Aubrey, the antiquary (admitted 1646); Lord Keeper Guildford (admitted November 27, 1655); Lord Chancellor Somers; Wycherley; Shadwell; Congreve; Elias Ashmole, the antiquary (called to the bar, November 2, 1660); Southerne; Edmund Burke; R. B. Sheridan; Sir William Blackstone; Dunning Lord Ashburton (d. 1783); Lord Chancellor Eldon; Lord Stowell; Thomas Moore, the poet; Sir Henry Havelock, the Indian hero, was a fellow-pupil with Judge Talfourd in Chitty's chambers in the Middle Temple.

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¹ The Fire of London was stopped in its march westward by the brick buildings of the Temple. The houses in Fleet Street were of wood. [See Ram Alley.]
² "His grave was about ten foot deepe or better, walled up a good way with bricks, of which also the bottome was paved, but the sides at the bottome for about two foot high were of black polished marble, wherein his coffin (covered with black bayes) lyeth, and upon that wall of marble was presently lett downe a huge black marble stone of great thicknesse, with this inscription: 'Hic jacet corpus Johannis Seldeni, qui obijt 30 die Novembris, 1654.' Over this was turned an arch of brick (for the House would not lose their ground) and upon that was throwne the earth etc."—Aubrey, vol. iii. p. 533.
³ Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. p. 631.
⁴ Evelyn received the first rudiments of his education in the church porch at Wotton.
⁵ When Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury, was Master of the Temple, the sees of Canterbury and London were vacant about the same time (1748); this occasioned an epigram upon Sherlock:—

At the Temple one day Sherlock taking a boat,
The waterman asked him, "Which way will you float?"
"Which way?" says the doctor; "why, fool, with the stream!"
To St. Paul's or to Lambeth was all one to him.

The tide in favour of Sherlock was running to St. Paul's. He was made Bishop of London.
⁶ Pegge's Curialia Misc., p. 236.