AMERICA AND THE MIDDLE TEMPLE to Mr. Richard Chettle. And two unto Mr. William Wheat of the Middle Temple Esquire." Mr. Richard Chettle appears from the records of the Inn to have resided in the Middle Temple but not to have been a member. On April 3oth, 1623, another member of the Inn, Mr. Thomas Culpepper, became the owner of three share* of land. The Virginia Company was dissolved in in 1624, so that throughout the whole of its history there can be traced links between the Inn and the Company and the evidence may be thought sufficient to justify the suggestion that the Society of the Middle Temple showed considerable interest in the birth of the American nation. Mention may be made of another connec tion to which there is no parallel at either of the other Inns of Court between the Inn and the United States. Five signatories of the Declaration of Independence were members of the Middle Temple — Edward Rutledge, Governor of South Carolina, Thomas Hayward, Judge Thomas Lynch, Arthur Midleton and Arthur McKean, who
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drafted the Constitution and was first chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. John Rutledge, who was Chairman of the Commission appointed to draft the first Constitution of the United States and was nominated by Washington to be second chief justice, was a student for five years at the Middle Temple. John Dickinson the " Pennsylvanie Farmer," Arthur Lee of Virginia, William Livingston, one of the framers of the Constitution, and Peyton Randolph, President of the Con tinental Congress at Philadelphia, were also members, and the last named was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. Thus the legal knowledge acquired in the Inn made a considerable contribution to the establishment of sound government, so that besides assisting at the birth of the nation the Society of the Middle Temple may lay claim to have aided in equipping it for an independent life upon its attainment of a separate existence. LONDON, KM-... March, 1908.
