Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/High days in the Temple
HIGH DAYS IN THE TEMPLE.
Silent and sombre as is the Temple now-a-days, it is as difficult to realise its ancient character for shows and revels as to imagine some demure old square-toes sowing the wild oats which scandal attributes to his hot youth. It requires some incident like the recent visit of the Prince of Wales, and the appearance of the quaint old place in gala dress, to bring home to one the days when the Inns of Court were the nurseries of fashion as well as of legal lore, and when the feasts and pageants of the lawyers were the talk and wonder of the metropolis. If the shade of any departed Templar of the Tudor or even Stuart period chanced to be present at the late ceremonial in the Temple, he must have thought it a very tame affair, and could not have failed to deduce the degeneracy of his countrymen from the substitution of a conversazione with tea and microscopes for the old “post revels,” when flagons of hippocras were handed round and the Lord of Misrule held absolute sway. It is long since that disorderly potentate went the way of the Dodo, and hippocras has become almost as mythical as ambrosia; but, once upon a time, they played a prominent part in legal education. Accordingly we need not be surprised to find that several accomplishments[1] were then deemed essential in a member of the bar which find no place in the modern examination papers.
Public exhibition of these acquirements was frequently demanded by the potent, grave, and reverend seigniors of the bench, who did not scruple themselves to join in the performance. There used to be a dance at least once or twice every term. The judges, Serjeants, and benchers danced first a peculiar measure of their own, in the course of which they circled several times the sea-coal fire. While the elders were recovering their breath, one of the gentlemen of the Utter Bar favoured them with a song; and then a few representatives of the Inner Bar “presented the house with a dance.” On one occasion, some of the students of Lincoln’s Inn flatly refused to dance when called upon, to the dismay and indignation of the bench, and were only brought to reason by the expulsion of every tenth mutineer for a certain time from “commons” in hall, and a threat that continued contumacy would entail perpetual excommunication from the bar. We may presume, therefore, the benchers agreed with M. Jourdain’s dancing-master that “il n’y a rien qui soit si necéssaire aux hommes que la danse?” and that if any one made a false step in the world, it could only be from ignorance of that precious art and mystery. Indeed there can be no doubt that it has enabled many a briefless barrister to put his best foot foremost. If I wished to be personal, I might point to several leaders of the bar, and ornaments of the bench, who owe their eminence in the profession to their dexterity in the ball-room. How would . ever have got his silk gown and large practice, or * * * his justiceship and knighthood, had not the one fascinated an heiress, whose brother was a Secretary to the Treasury, by his proficiency in the valse à deux temps, or had the other not been able to bear the somewhat stout Polly Peachem (daughter of the eminent attorney) in triumph through the polka? To avoid personalities, and to go back long beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant, did not Sir John Davies, who rose to be Chief Justice, first distinguish himself by a poem on dancing? And we all know by what steps Sir Christopher Hatton advanced to the woolsack.
His bushy beard and shoe-strings green,
His high-crowned hat and satin doublet,
Moved the stout heart of England’s Queen,
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.
Surely, therefore, it was a great mistake that the proposal to bring the recent festivities in the Middle Temple to a close by a ball, at which the benchers were to dance, as of old, round the fire, was overruled. What a sight it would have been for Mr. Spurgeon to have seen the Lord Chancellor and the Treasurer of the Inn, hand in hand, tripping it on the light fantastic toe, with the other veterans of the law in their rear! But, alas! benchers now “have thews and sinews like their ancestors, but woe the while their fathers’ minds are dead.” Depend upon it their predecessors knew what they were about in placing dancing in the curriculum, and I would advise no young aspirant of the woolsack to neglect the noble art. Besides galliards, corantas, and other dances, the “post revels” often included masques and plays, for the splendour as well as wit of which the Inns of Court were celebrated. Even the gravest condescended to take part in these amusements. Bacon was one of the “getters-up” of a masque in Gray’s Inn, and Hyde’s name appears on a similar occasion in the reign of Charles I. Generally these days were performed by members of the Inn; but sometimes regular actors were engaged, as when Shakespear’s “Twelfth Night” was represented in Middle Temple Hall. About the last revel in any of the Inns was in the Inner Temple, in 1773, when Talbot was raised to the woolsack: on that occasion the benchers danced, and there was a play by the actors from the Haymarket, “who came in chairs ready dressed.” It was only at Yule-tide that the Lord of Misrule was in office: and the madcap pranks which were played in that privileged period by his subjects, were regarded with no little alarm by the sober citizens though they excited the admiration and envy of the Court gallants. The buffoonery and riot which were practised at such times appear to have been carried beyond all bounds, at least Evelyn has recorded the disgust with which he witnessed the “revels” in Charles II.’s reign.
The benchers not only shared the dances and gambols of the other members of their Inn, but exercised a sort of fatherly control over them. In the old byelaws, very particular regulations as to costume are laid down. As one might suppose from their proximity to Alsatia on the one hand, and to the Court on the other, the Templars caught some strange fashions both of dress and manner. They seem to have been tremendous swells in their own way, some of them emulating the bushy beards, scandalous long swords, and swaggering air of their neighbours in Whitefriars, and others adopting the more elegant, but not less fantastic mode of the Court gallants. The benchers observed both styles with dislike and prohibited all long beards, curled hair, great ruffs, wide slashed hose, whether of Dutch or Spanish cut, and all other extravagant dresses, the members of the Temples being specially enjoined to “order their hair to decency and formality.” One can imagine also the somewhat boisterous character of commons in those byegone times, when no one was allowed to bring any weapon into hall, except a little dagger to cut his meat with, and when dice and shove-groat were played at table. The unruly conduct of the Templars in some of these respects contrasts singularly with their submission—not to say servility—on others. The benchers and judges on “grand days” were always waited upon by students, and when Charles II. honoured the Inner Temple with a visit, the royal table was served by “fifty select gentlemen of the Society in their gowns.”
It must not be supposed, however, that the benchers neglected the legal part of the students’ training. “Headers” were appointed to lecture on the leading principles of the law: and the dinner in hall was usually followed by the “mooting,” or “bolting” of some argument between two members of the Utter Bar. The students were thus informed not only of the doctrines of English law, but of the mode of debate practised in the courts, and had themselves to perform a “moot” before they were called. The terms which had to be kept extended over seven years, and more continuous attendance was required than now. No dinner was complete without a “moot” or “dance,” and thus proficiency in the two chief branches of legal education could hardly fail to be secured—the great aim of such education being to render the student not only a learned lawyer, but a polished gentleman, worthy of the pure blood and “three descents” which were required to qualify him for admission.
Of the old curriculum, the eating of so many dinners in hall, is almost the only remnant which has been preserved to our practical matter-of-fact days. The benchers are no longer readers, except in name, the task of lecturing being devolved upon regular professors. The “moots,” and dances, and revels are things of the past, and the benchers no longer issue edicts on the cut either of the hair or trousers of their subjects. If the process of change continues in the same direction as hitherto, we may look to see even the time-honoured “eating of terms” abolished, and the Council of Legal Education exercising all the prerogatives of the benchers in regard to the admission of students and government of the Inns.
- ↑ “The Scholars of the Inns of Court,” writes Fortescue, “did not only study the laws to serve the courts of justice and profit their country, but did further learn to dance, to sing, to play upon instruments on the ferial days, and to study divinity on the festival, using such exercises as those did who were brought up in the King’s Court.”