A copy of the original deed of this association of lawyers to resist the threatened invasion (1584), relating to Lincoln’s Inn, hangs in the Drill Hall. The original is still in possession of the Earl of Ellesmere, whose ancestor, Thomas Egerton, then Solicitor-General and afterwards Chancellor, was the first to sign it. Upon the arrest of the Five Members in 1642, five hundred warlike Lawyers marched down to Westminster to express their determination to protect their Sovereign, Charles I. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Charles, who from the beginning of his reign had always encouraged the Benchers and Students to exercise themselves in arms and horsemanship, granted a commission to Edward, Lord Lyttleton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, to raise a regiment of infantry from ‘the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Chancery.’ Lyttleton died of a chill contracted whilst drilling his recruits, and was succeeded by Chief Justice Heath. A regiment of foot ‘for the security of the Universitie and Cittie of Oxford,’ and a regiment of cavalry ‘very fine and well-horsed,’ to guard the King’s person, did not exhaust the fighting capacity of the Lawyers, for the majority of the Bar, who saw the real issue at stake in the country, sided with the Parliament. Bulstrode Whitelock, Lieutenant-General Jones, and Commissary Ireton were Gentlemen of the Robe, who rose to eminence in the service of the Commonwealth. John Hampden, we have seen, was a member of the Inner Temple; Oliver St. John was a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and so, too, tradition says, was Oliver Cromwell, who, when Captain of the Slepe Troop of the Essex Association, occupied chambers in the old Gatehouse here. Dugdale quotes some orders that were drawn up, in the reign of King James, for establishing ‘the Company of the Inns of Court and Chancery in their exercises of Military Discipline,’ among which was the wise provision that ‘if anyone be a common swearer, or quarreller, he shall be cashiered.’ The number was limited to 600, and ‘It is intended that no Gentlemen are to be enjoyned to exercise in this kind, but such as shall voluntarily offer themselves, to be tolerated to do it at their own voluntary charge.’ The officers were to be chosen by their Captain; every House to give their own Gentlemen their rank, and the priority of the Houses to be decided by chance of dice.