It was in Clifford’s Inn that Sir Matthew Hale and the other Commissioners sat to deal with the cases which arose after the Great Fire of London and the questions of boundaries and rebuilding. Clifford’s Inn was always reckoned, except by its members, a dependency of the Inner Temple. No Inn of Court, at any rate, acquired its lease or freehold. Clifford’s Inn paid its own way, had its own customs, its great days, and peculiar rules. The most interesting of its old customs was a kind of grace, which used to be performed after dinner by a member of what was mysteriously called the Kentish Mess. The Chairman of this Mess, for which a special table was always provided, after bowing gravely to the Principal, took from a servitor four small loaves joined together in the shape of a cross. These he dashed upon the table before him three times, amid profound silence. The bread was then passed down to the last man in the Kentish Mess, who carried it from the Hall. A number of old women used to wait at the buttery to receive these crumbs which had fallen from the rich man’s table. The exact significance of the symbolism of this performance is not clear. It is probably the usual mixture of Pagan rites and Christian observance. Antiquaries, indeed, have suggested that ‘this singular custom typifies offerings to Ceres, who first taught mankind the use of laws, and originated those peculiar ornaments of civilization, their expounders, the lawyers.’[77] Of the Inns attached to the Middle Temple, the Strand, or Chester’s Inn, so-called ‘for the nearnesse to the Bishop of Chester’s house’ (Stow), stood near the Church of St. Mary le Strand, without Temple Bar. It was pulled down by the Protector, Duke of Somerset, ‘who in place thereof raised that large and beautiful house, but yet unfinished, called Somerset house.’ Lastly, there was New Inn. In St. George’s Lane, near the Old Bailey, was an Inn of Chancery, whence the Society, Stow tells us, moved to ‘a common hostelry, called of the sign Our Lady Inne, not far from Clement’s Inne, and which they hold by the name of the New Inn, paying therefor £6 rent, for more cannot be gotten of them, and much less will they be put from it.’ (See p. 40.) This ‘New Inn,’ which lay west of Clement’s Inn, in Wych Street, has also disappeared. Here Sir Thomas More studied prior to his being admitted to Lincoln’s Inn. Next to Serjeants’ Inn in Chancery Lane, and adjoining the garden of Clifford’s Inn, stood the House of the Converted Jews, founded by Henry III., in place of a Jew’s house forfeited to him (1233).