London (England) -- Antiquities; London (England) -- History
It is a curious coincidence that not long after the coming of the
lawyers a change was introduced in the legal profession which recalls
the organisation of the old military brotherhood. In 1333, according to
Dugdale, the judges of the Court of Common Pleas received knighthood,
and so became in a sense successors of the Knights Templars. The
creation of sergeants-at-law (now abolished) goes further back, but it
has been suggested that they were representatives of the _freres
serjens_, the _fratres servientes_, of the old Order. Had the white
linen coif worn by sergeants the same symbolical meaning as the
Templars' white mantle? Was it, as some say, the survival of a linen
headdress brought back by the Templars from the East? These are
disputable points. At any rate, the common life at the Temple, with the
associations which it recalled, cannot have been without its influence
on the lawyers. Their numbers grew apace. By 1470 courses of legal
studies had been organised, and each of the two Inns at the Temple had
more (perhaps considerably more) than two hundred students--numbers
amply sufficient to resist successfully any attempts on the part of the
Lord Mayor, backed by the city apprentices, to enforce an illegal
jurisdiction over the precincts. In the absence of maps and records we
cannot trace with certainty the gradual extension of the buildings. Such
names as Elm Court and Figtree Court suggest that in byegone days open
spaces and garden plots were interspersed among the chambers. Not least
among the amenities of the lawyers' goodly heritage was the large garden
by the river side with its pretty fifteenth century story of the red and
white roses. It has been said that Shakespeare in his well-known scene
refers to the smallness of the hall in the phrase which he assigns to
Suffolk:
"Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;
The garden here is more convenient."
But do the words imply more than the obvious contrast between being
indoors and in the open air, as regards noise? We have a companion
picture to Shakespeare's garden-scene in Spenser's river-piece. Some
people see in it a reference to "Brick Buildings" which stood on the
site of what is now Brick Court:
"Those bricky towers
The which on Themmes brode aged back do ride
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers;
There whilome wont the Templer Knights to bide,
Till they decayed through pride."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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