FIVE

THE SPELL OF THE TEMPLE AND INNS OF COURT

HE Temple lies between Fleet Street and

TH

the river, with Essex Street on the west and Whitefriars on the east. It is a wide area of quaint buildings, strange windings and uncertain by-ways relieved by unexpected open spaces and magnificent gardens-a place to wander in if you are fond of wandering, and to get lost in if you make up your mind to wander and do not mind getting lost. For hundreds of years this has been hallowed ground in sacred history. It was the quarters of the Knights Templars, a religious order founded in the twelfth century to protect the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the recruiting point for Crusaders. When the Order was dissolved in 1313 the Temple became Crown property. In 1346 it was leased to the

professors of common law and since then has been a school of law, and a great centre of learning in England.

There are two divisions of the Temple, the eastern or Inner Temple; the western or Middle Temple. The Inner Temple came by its name being nearest the City; the Middle Temple because it was between the Inner and Outer Temples. The Outer Temple vanished long ago. In 1609, James I. conveyed the Temple property by grant to the benchers of the Inner and Middle Temple-two of the Inns of Court.

The Inns of Court are four-the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. These are societies formed for the study of law and custom has given them the exclusive privilege of deciding who may be called to the bar. Their quarters were called Inns of Court originally because as students of law they belonged to "the King's Court." In the 15th century there were ten other Seminaries called

Inns of Chancery offshoots from the four parent societies. In the Inns of Chancery fees were low and suited to the middle classes-the Inns of Court being patronized by the aristocracy.

The inner Temple gateway in the Strand opposite Chancery Lane leads after a few yards directly to the Temple Church, literally buried here close to the busiest street in London. This is the famous Round Church, the chapel of the Inner Temple in which the Knights Templars worshipped, and is the only real relic left of the Knights Templars. It has stood here since 1185, one of the four round churches of England, built in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In early days lawyers received their clients in this church. It was arranged in the manner of an exchange, each lawyer having his regular standing place.

To the north of the Temple Church is a plain slab recording that Oliver Goldsmith author of the "Vicar of Wakefield," lies buried here.

William Cowper the poet lived for years in the Inner Temple, where he several times tried to commit suicide but failed in each attempt.

Charles Lamb was born in 1775 at No. 2 Crown Office Row in rooms overlooking the Temple Garden.

In Temple Garden, best seen from Crown Office Row, you look upon the spot where Shakespeare had the partisans first choose the red rose or the white as the badge of the houses of York or Lancaster. In "King Henry VI.," this picking is stirringly told of and the Earl of Warwick exclaims:

And here I prophesy, the 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.

Middle Temple is entered from Fleet Street close by Temple Bar Memorial, by way of Mid

dle Temple Lane, through a brick gateway designed by Wren and built in 1684. Middle Temple Lane divides Middle from Inner Temple. It is narrow, crooked and dark, a survival of the long past. Here are houses with overhanging upper floors, and law stationers' shops on the lane level or below it. Off from the thoroughfare are dingy nooks and odd courts. In one such, Brick Court, at No. 2, were Oliver Goldsmith's last lodgings and here he died The learned Blackstone lived in the same building on the floor below Goldsmith and complained that he was much disturbed on occasions when the author of the ''Vicar of Wakefield" and the "Deserted Village" gave supper parties that were "filled with roaring comic songs."

in 1774.

The turning beyond Brick Court opens on the Hall of the Middle Temple, a perfect example of Elizabethan architecture, and where Shakespeare's charming comedy of "Twelfth Night" was first performed. In the Hall is preserved a table made of wood from one of the ships of the Great Armada on which the death warrant

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