Another cause which greatly contributed to the brilliant record of the Inns as homes of Literature and the Drama, as well as of the Law, was the rule which, up till quite a few years ago, compelled Irish Law-students to keep a certain number of terms in London prior to ‘call’ at the King’s Inn, Dublin. Daniel O’Connell, at Lincoln’s Inn, Curran, Flood, Grattan, the orators; Tom Moore, the poet, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the dramatist, at the Temple, are among the later ‘Wild Irishmen’ who owed something to the London Inns in accordance with this rule, and rewarded the Metropolis with their eloquence and wit. In modern times the need of general regulations as to qualification by the keeping of terms and of examinations as a guarantee of competency has been recognized. After over 200 years of survival as an obsolete office, Readerships have been revived again to perform their proper functions. ‘A council of eight Benchers, representing all the Inns of Court, was appointed to frame lectures “open to the members of each society,” and five Readerships were established in several branches of legal science (1852). Attendance at these lectures was made compulsory, unless the candidate preferred submitting to an examination in Roman and English Law and Constitutional History. Three years [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL THE date of its erection (1570) is in the stained-glass window on the right. In this Hall Queen Elizabeth may have danced with Sir Christopher Hatton, and here Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ was first performed (see pp. 75-78).] later, a Royal Commission advised the establishment of a preliminary and final examination for all Bar students, together with the formation of a Law University with power to confer degrees in Law. The suggestions of the Commission were only partially acted upon, and then not till 1870, when Lord Chancellor Westbury succeeded in getting a preliminary examination in Latin and English subjects adopted and the final examination made obligatory.’[11] And it is pleasant to note, too, that about the same time (1875) the custom of the ancient mootings, so useful for promoting ready address and sound knowledge of the Law among the aspirants to the Bar, was revived at Gray’s Inn. The discipline which the Inns of Court enforced upon their students corresponded in general to that exercised by an Oxford or Cambridge College. Fines and ‘putting out of Commons’ were the usual forms of punishment, though the power of imprisoning ‘gentlemen of the House’ for wilful misdemeanour and disobedience ‘was sometimes exercised by the Masters of the Bench.’[12]