Order and the dispersion of their lands says Dick in " King Henry VI.," and it is and goods, the Temple went to the Hos matter of history that the Temple was among pitallers, and after some few years was the first places which Jack Cade marked leased to the little company of lawyers as out for instant destruction. Three hundred their place of rest and study. They were a years after, at the time of the Gordon riots, small body enough, having something of the when Mr. Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, ecclesiastical habit still clinging to them, in came down from Cursitor Street to his days when mtllus clericus nisi cansidicus was chambers with his girl-wife on his arm, he something more than a rhetorical apothegm. found Fleet Street alive with a rabble full of Men seem to have devoted themselves to the same amiable sentiments, while inside law with a touch of religious zeal, — as if they .the closed gates was gathered an army of had received a " call" before entering. They defense. And very rough treatment did the probably saw nothing incongruous in St. beautiful Bessie Surtees receive, so that when Swithin sitting as Lord Chancellor and they reached the Middle Temple gate her solving a peasant's claim for broken eggs head was bare, her kerchief torn, and all her by restoring the eggs uncracked by a mir ringlets loose about her shoulders. It would acle from the Bench.' be pleasant to be able to add that the garri For such a band of enthusiasts the Temple son, inspired by the lady's lovely confusion, was a perfect home. London ended then and burning for revenge, dashed out and at Ludgate, and the river Fleet (now a city made havoc from Thames to Tower Hill. sewer) flowed between. On the one side, The facts are that they preferred to remain Fleet Street was an open road as far as strongly intrenched inside; and when, later Westminster; on the other, broad grounds in the day, some of the younger brethren sloped down to 'Thames side — a river then formed themselves into a troop for active spanned by one bridge, that still ran ' silvery ' service, they found the door shut in their past a pleasant strand. Shut off from tumult, faces by the officer in command. He de and guarded from attack (even now at night clined, he said, to allow his soldiers to be the Temple is a fenced city guarded by gates shot from behind. on every hand), the place seems to have kept The first Temple student whom we can for many years this shadow of monasticism. identify with anything approaching certainty The dining and sleeping in pairs, " so that is Geoffrey Chaucer. This is to reject St. one might watch the other," though it soon Swithin, since it does not seem probable that lost its efficacy, the expulsion from Hall, he belonged to any Inn of Court, and in any and other methods of punishment, were all case was hardly of the stuff of which stu relics of the older dispensation, and served dents are made. It is different with Chau to mark out the new Templars as a separate cer, although here, too, material is scanty and exclusive order. Eighty years after and confined to one bald entry in the pre wards, when Wat Tyler and the men of face of Mr. Thomas Speght, which assigns Kent poured down on the lawyers, sacked him to the Inner Temple, and adds, as cor their houses and made bonfires of the books roboration, that he met there " the moral and rolls, it was " to spite the Knights Hos Gower." " Not many years since," adds pitallers." In most risings of the kind the Speght, " Master Buckley did see a recprd Temple seems to have received almost the in the same house, where Geoffrey Chaucer first attention of the mob. v was fined two shillings for beating a Fran "The first thing, let 's kill all the lawyers," ciscan friar in Fleet Street." This is the only record of the incident, although the 1 " Statimque porrecto crucis signo, fracturam omnium learned Mr. Thornbury, copying from ovorum consolidat."— William of Malmesbury, 242.
