Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/452

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Temple Students and Temple Studies. We can find only one story of those days. It is said that he first came into notice when, as a student, he argued for the mem bers in " the Cook's case," presumably a question of bad commons in the hall. Whatever it was, it had been a stumblingblock to the Bench until Coke's ingenuity and learning " made all clear." From the time of Coke onwards the Inns

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that we have found Falstaffs prototype in a tale told in the Burleigh Papers no earlier than 1582; and since the resemblance has many points of interest, introduces some famous students and has not, so far as we know, been noticed before, we shall detail it rather fully. The writer is one Fleet wood, Recorder of London, Burleigh's very good friend and spy on the Inns of Court,

Minni.E TEMPLE HALL.

have chronicles enough and to spare. We hope to be forgiven if we assign the resi dence of Falstaff and Shallow in Clement's Inn to this period. Speaking by the book, their time had come and gone two hundred years before. We venture to assert that the anachronism is Shakespeare's rather than ours. There is very little about the Inns of Court novitiate of Falstaff to suggest the earlier monastic days of these institutions. Indeed, after some search, it seems probable

with the eye of a hawk for a Papist and responsible for many a Star Chamber case among the students. He- tells how certain students of the Inns of Chancery have been indicted for a riot some nights since "for common disturbers of the peax.^ for nightwalkers, for breakers of glass windows, lanthorns and such like." At whose trial the Recorder observed: "I do suppose two of them to be descended -of the blood of Nero the tyrant. I never knew of two