Still another member of this circle of poets associated with the Inns of Court is the Cuddy of the pastoral poems, the intimate friend of Wither and Browne,--Christopher Brooke, who, though he does not cut much of a figure in his _Elegies_, or in his _Ghost of Richard III_, was a lovable and hearty friend, and a distinguished Bencher of Lincoln's Inn. That Brooke was intimate with Shakespeare's company of the King's Servants, at just the period that Beaumont and Fletcher were most closely associated with that company, we have already noticed. As one of the barristers who, in 1612, defended Burbadge and Heming against the bill of complaint brought by Kirkham for recovery of profits in the Blackfriars theatre, he had much to do with having the "plaintiff's bill cleerly and absolutely dismissed out of this courte."[87] This community of friendship with Browne and Browne's circle gives us, by inference, a clue to an extended list of the gentlemen of London with whom Beaumont cannot have altogether failed to be acquainted. Browne succeeded Beaumont as poet of the Inner Temple, and the friends of the former in that Society would be known to the latter. Among those who wrote verses laudatory of Browne's _Pastorals_ between 1613 and 1616, was his "learned friend," John Selden, the jurist and antiquary, whose "chamber was in the paper buildings which looke towards the garden." He kept, says Aubrey, "a plentifull table, and was never without learned company": frequently that of Jonson, Drayton, and Camden; and, we may be certain, of John Fletcher, too; for on his mother's side, Selden as his coat of arms and epitaph prove, and as Hasted tells us in his _History of Kent_, was of the "equestrian" family of Bakers to which Fletcher's stepsisters belonged. Selden was of Beaumont's age to a year, and had been of the Society since 1604. For Browne's book Edward Heyward, also, wrote verses,--Selden's most "devoted friend and chamber-fellow,"--to whom (Aubrey again) "he dedicated his _Titles of Honour_," 1614. Heyward came from Norfolk and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1604. And with Selden must be also bracketed, Thomas Wenman, of Oxfordshire; for so Suckling brackets him in the _Session of the Poets_: The poets met the other day, And Apollo was at the meeting, they say.... 'Twas strange to see how they flocked together: There was Selden, and he stood next to the chaire, And Wenman not far off, which was very faire.