Message #120913

[Knight of Jerusalem]

by means of a covered way or cloister, which ran at right angles with them over the site of the present cloister-chambers, and communicated with the upper and under story of the chapel of St. Anne, which formerly stood on the south side of the church. By means of this corridor and chapel the brethren of the Temple had private access to the church for the performance of their strict religious duties, and of their secret ceremonies of admitting novices to the vows of the order. In 9 Jac. I. A.D. 1612, some brick buildings three stories high were erected over this antient cloister by Francis Tate, esq., and being burnt down a few years afterwards, the interesting covered way which connected the church with the antient convent was involved in the general destruction, as appears from the following inscription upon the present buildings:

"VETUSTISSIMA TEMPLARIORUM PORTICU IGNE CONSUMTA, ANNO 1678, NOVA HÆC, SUMPTIBUS MEDII TEMPLI EXTRUCTA ANNO 1681 GULIELMO WHITELOCKE ARMIGERO, THESAURARIO.

"The very antient portico of the Templars being consumed by fire in the year 1678, these new buildings were erected at the expense of the Middle Temple in the year 1681, William Whitlock, esq., being treasurer."

The cloisters of the Templars formed the medium of communication between the hall, the church, and the cells of the serving brethren of the order. *

During the formation of the present new entrance into the Temple by the church, at the bottom of the Inner Temple-lane, a considerable portion of the brickwork of the old houses was pulled down, and an antient wall of great thickness was disclosed. It was composed of chalk, rag-stone, and rubble, exactly resembling the walls of the church. It ran in a direction east and west, and


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appeared to have formed the extreme northern boundary of the old convent.

The site of the remaining buildings of the antient Temple cannot now be determined with certainty.

The mansion-house, (Mansum Novi Templi,) the residence of the Master and knights, who were lodged separately from the serving brethren and ate at a separate table, appears to have stood at the east end of the hall, on the site of the present library and apartments of the masters of the bench.

The proud and powerful Knights Templars were succeeded in the occupation of the TEMPLE by a body of learned lawyers, who took possession of the old hall and the gloomy cells of the military monks, and converted the chief house of their order into the great and most antient Common Law University of England.

For more than five centuries the retreats of the religious warriors have been devoted to "the studious and eloquent pleaders of causes," a new kind of Templars, who, as Fuller quaintly observes, now "defend one Christian from another as the old ones did Christians from Pagans." The modern Templars have been termed milites justitiæ, or "soldiers of justice," for, as John of Salisbury, a writer of the twelfth century, saith, "neque reipublicæ militant soli illi, qui galeis thoracisque muniti in hostes exercent tela quælibet, sed et patroni causarum, qui lapsa erigunt, fatigata reparant, nec minus provident humano generi, quam si laborantium vitam, spem, posterosque, armorum præsidio, ab hostibus tuerentur." "They do not alone fight for the state who, panoplied in helmets and breastplates, wield the sword and the dart against the enemy, for the pleaders of causes, who redress wrongs, who raise up the oppressed, do protect and provide for the human race as much as if they were to defend the

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lives, fortunes, and families of industrious citizens with the sword."


"Besides encounters at the bar
Are braver now than those in war,
In which the law does execution
With less disorder and confusion;
Has more of honour in’t, some bold,
Not like the new way, but the old,
When those the pen had drawn together
Decided quarrels with the feather,
And winged arrows killed as dead,
And more than bullets now of lead:
So all their combats now, as then,
Are managed chiefly by the pen;
That does the feat, with braver vigours,
In words at length, as well as figures."

The settlement of the lawyers in the Temple was brought about in the following manner.

On the imprisonment of the Knights Templars, the chief house of the order in London, in common with the other property of the military monks, was seized into the king's hands, and was committed to the care of James le Botiller and William de Basing, who, on the 9th of December, A.D. 1311, were commanded to hand it over to the sheriffs of London, to be taken charge of by them. * Two years afterwards the Temple was granted to that powerful nobleman, Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, who had been one of the leaders of the baronial conspiracy against Piers Gavaston. † ‡ As Thomas earl of Lancaster, however, claimed the Temple by escheat as the immediate lord of the fee, the earl of Pembroke, on the 3rd of Oct., A.D. 1316, at




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