Lincoln's Inn

“ Lincoln’s Inn principally consists of three rows of good buildings, all taken up by gentlemen of the society. These form three sides of the square, and here the buildings are all new and uniform, the north side lying open to the gardens, which are greatly improved with gravel walks, grass plats, rows of trees, and a very long terrace walk, which affords a fine prospect of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. ”

“ Just as the Templars rented a field adjoining their buildings which they used for tilting, so, beyond the houses of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and the Bishop of Chichester, lay a meadow, and beyond it again the Common, still known as Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Before 1602 there were no buildings on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn, and, so late as the reign of Henry VIII., so rural were the surroundings that rabbits abounded there, and had, indeed, to be preserved from the sporting proclivities of the students. ”

“ After leaving Lincoln's Inn, we looked at Gray's Inn, which is a great, quiet domain, quadrangle beyond quadrangle, close beside Holborn, and a large space of greensward enclosed within it. It is very strange to find so much of ancient quietude right in the monster city's very jaws, which yet the monster shall not eat up,—right in its very belly, indeed, which yet, in all these ages, it shall not digest and convert into the same substance as the rest of its bustling streets. ”

“ In Chancery Lane, almost facing Carey Street, is an arch, through which we get a glimpse of the old Rolls Chapel, which seems a ghostly place and abandoned.{97}
Lincoln’s Inn itself is an attractive building enough. The old heavy brick gateway, grimed and encrusted with the dirt of centuries, has an air of impressive gloominess. ”

“ BEN JONSON AND LINCOLN'S INN.
Our fancy to speak of books, and their writers and sellers, has led us aside from the area marked out by Mr. Thornbury for his own explorations, so we must return to bounds, within which we find Lincoln's-Inn Fields. These inns were originally established as places of entertainment, where pilgrims and other travellers were hospitably attended by the monks. The town houses of noblemen were also called inns, just as in Paris they were styled hostels. ”

“ It must be confessed that the interest of Lincoln’s Inn Fields lies not so much in the gardens—modernised out of every semblance of their seventeenth-century appearance—as in the beautiful old houses surrounding them—noble, dignified mansions some of those on the west side, built by Inigo Jones and once owned by Milords of Lindsay, Somers and Erskine. ”

“ Boys and girls went a-Maying where balls and suppers are now held; and within about a quarter of a mile of Lincoln's Inn, a small, tall-chimneyed house, four stories high on one side, and two on another, with a round tower of brick-work added to contain the staircase, which seemed to have been forgotten in the original construction, rose in the midst of a garden, very near the spot where gentlemen in curious wigs and black gowns now hurry about to plead the cause of the rich, but not in general of the poor, if they can help it. ”

“ Or wait for customers between
The pillar-rows in Lincoln’s Inn.”
The cross-legged knights, it is almost needless to add, are the effigies of the mailed warriors, which still remain in fine preservation. The “pillar-rows in Lincoln’s Inn,” I apprehend, refer to the crypt, or open vault, beneath Inigo Jones’s chapel in Lincoln’s Inn, originally designed for an ambulatory. [519] It is singular to reflect on the entire change in the public manners within two centuries. ”

“ As by reference to our article on Tavern Signs it will be seen how the word Inn originally denoted a private mansion, it will suffice to state here that the various colleges of the law students in London are styled Inns because the chief of them were at one time the residences of the nobility whose family names they still bear. Thus, Lincoln’s Inn was the town mansion of the Earls of Lincoln, Gray’s Inn, of the Earls Gray, Furnival’s Inn, of the Lords Furnival, and Clifford’s Inn, of the Lords Clifford. ”

“ Lincoln’s Inn takes its name from a thirteenth century Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, who had a mansion in Chancery Lane near the first church of the Knights Templars. His arms are carved over the brick gateway, separated from those of the builder, Sir Thomas Lovel, by the royal arms of England. None of the existing old buildings are later than Tudor times. ”

“ Only the benchers and members of Lincoln’s Inn may use the elm-shaded gardens. They not only fulfil Pepys’ prophecy that they would be very pretty, but they had a useful war record, as a memorial tablet shows.{130}
I am told that the Curfew is still rung at Lincoln’s Inn. At a quarter to nine each evening the chief porter climbs to the tower of the chapel and when the hour has struck he sounds the curfew fifty times. The bell used was brought from Cadiz by the Earl of Essex in 1596. ”

“ It remains to mention the Northern wing of Lincoln’s Inn, the rectangular Court which lines Chancery Lane on the one side and faces the green sward of the Garden on the other. ‘The Terrace walk,’ says Herbert (p. 301) truly enough, ‘forms an uncommonly fine promenade ... and the gardens themselves, adorned with a number of fine, stately trees, receive a sort of consequence from the grandeur of the adjoining pile.’ This is Stone Building, and is the outcome of a design to rebuild the whole Inn in 1780 in the Palladian style. ”

“ Lincoln’s Inn is one of the principal inns of court.{22}
SWEEP!—SOOT OH!
This trade was, until of late, performed by small boys, who used to climb up chimneys, brushing away the soot as they went, until they arrived at the top, where they performed a rattle of triumph on the sides of the pot. Poor little sweep! your “occupation’s gone;” the term “climbing boy” will soon become obselete, for chimneys are now swept by machines, such as the one on the shoulders of the boy in our picture. ”

“ The new hall of Lincoln's Inn, just completed and equal to anything in England, is situated on the site of the old hall, between Middle Temple Cloister and Crown Office-row. It is of the Perpendicular Gothic style, faced externally with Portland stone and internally with Bath. The building projects towards the gardens 14 feet more than the old hall, which measured 70 feet by 29 feet; the new hall being 93 feet by 41 feet. Its floor above the pavement-level, and the basement is occupied by the various offices required for the officials. ”

“ Leaping from the window of the inn, a man clothed in a close-fitting coat, and hose of Lincoln green, with a sword by his side, a narrow buckler on his shoulder, a sheaf of arrows under his left arm, and a leathern bracer just below the bend of the elbow, sprang forward, with a pole some six feet long in his hand, and at three bounds cleared the space between the inn and the disputants. ”

“ Miracle plays and moralities, dancing and music, fantastic processions and mad pranks, spurred on the hours that were not devoted to heavy meals and deep potations. In the merriments of the different Inns there was a pleasant diversity—with regard to the duration and details of the entertainments: and occasionally the members of the four societies acted with so little concert that their festivals, falling at exactly the same time, were productive of rivalry and disappointments. Dugdale thinks that the Christmas revels were not regularly kept in Lincoln's Inn during the reign of Henry VIII. ”

“ At any rate, my friends of Lincoln's Inn, like others of the same class, are distinguished by their courteous manners, deliberate proceedings, innocence of legal technicalities, long credit and heavy charges. Leasem, the elder partner, wears powder and a huge bunch of seals, lives in Queen Square, drives a brougham, gives the dinners and does the cordial department. He is so strict in performing the latter duty, that he once addressed a poacher who had shot a Duke's keeper, as "my dear creature," although he afterwards hung him. ”

“ He was placed on the half-pay list on 25 March 1816, and the next year entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, and by hard work soon became competent to practise as a special pleader, and continued to do so until 1832, when he was called to the bar in Lincoln's Inn. He joined the northern circuit, where he found work and became popular. ”

“ Paul, I imagine he stated the truth. Still, I may be wrong. But I shall soon know."
"You think he was so confident he had obliterated the past, so to speak, that he took no further precautions?"
"That's just my idea. Anyhow, I wish you would inquire about steamers, and secure a berth for me on the first one that goes out. Meanwhile I'll go over to Ivydene."
"All right," said Ernest, and went across to the office in Lincoln's Inn. There he rang up the shipping companies on the telephone, and finally arranged for a passage on the St. Louis, which was leaving Southampton next morning. ”

“ Along the walls directly in front of us, a blaze of purple bloom, stretches the [Pg 375] “largest wisteria in England,” one hundred and eighty feet in length, its stem like a good-sized tree. It has been thus with so many of the old-time inns; each has had some peculiar charm. But surely no architect ever planned the Red Lion Inn; it is a rambling building that seems to have grown up with the years. No straight line curbs its walls; none of its floors maintain the same level; it is a maze of strangely assorted apartments, narrow, winding hallways and odd nooks and corners. ”

“ But the great building is still constructionally the house that fifteenth-century monk left, and how well and truly he built it, let its sound and stable condition, after four centuries and a half of constant use, tell.
Such modern touches as there are about this quaintly named “New” inn are the merest light clothing upon its ancient body, and the sitting-rooms and forty or so bedrooms, cosy and comfortable to us moderns, are but modern in their carpets and fittings, and in the paper that decorates their walls, in between the stout dark timber framing. ”

“ The way to this derelict haunt of eighteenth-century gaiety lies down the yard of the inn, and up a fine broad stone stairway, now much chipped, dirty, and neglected. On the ground floor is the billiard-room of the present day, formerly the coach dining-room. In crepuscular apartments adjoining, in these times given over to forgotten lumber, the curious may find the deserted kitchens of a bygone age, with the lifts and hatches to upper floors that once conveyed their abundant meals to a vanished generation of John Bulls. ”

“ The establishment and building of roads, bridges, and opening of inns show that mutual interest which marks civilization, and separates us from the lonely, selfish life of a savage. Soon inns were found everywhere in the Northern colonies. In New England, New York, and Pennsylvania an inn was called an ordinary, a victualling, a cook-shop, or a tavern before we had our modern word hotel. ”

“ Sign-board of
Hays’ Tavern.
Dr. Dwight in his Travels said that Englishmen often laughed at the fact that inns in New England were kept by men of consequence. He says:—
“Our ancestors considered the inn a place where corruption might naturally arise and easily spread; also as a place where travellers must trust themselves, their horses, baggage, and money, and where women must not be subjected to disagreeable experiences. To provide for safety and comfort and against danger and mischief they took particular pains in their laws to prevent inns from being kept by unprincipled or worthless men. ”

“ The hosteller remains as the ostler, who now usually confines his attention to four-footed visitors; the chamberlain has changed his sex (though only since the days of Sir Roger de Coverley) and has become the Chambermaid. In most old manor-houses provisions, wine and ale were served from a special department close to the porch and called the “bower,” from Norse Bür, meaning buttery. Frequenters of a modern inn resort for the same purpose to the “bar.” Lastly, the presiding genius in every hotel or tavern, no matter how humble, is invariably referred to as “the Landlord.” ”

“ Let us admit and welcome the efforts of the old Georgian coaching inns to keep abreast of the times. Let us cheerfully accept the [Pg 226] attempts of mine host to put life into an old musty coffee-room and bar parlour. Conservatism is not without value at the inn with a history, and the landlord for his own sake must step warily. Let no iconoclast interfere too violently with the worm-eaten glories of old oak and mahogany or seek to disparage the solid virtues of the great round of beef, or the appetising ingredients of the game pie. Tradition in such things is well worth preserving. ”

“ The traveller with an eye for such things may still identify these inns retired from business, chiefly by their old archways and entries into stable-yards, but to the expert, even when those features are absent, there is generally some indefinable air about a house once an inn that singles it out from others. Such an one is the immense, four-square, red-brick farm-house midway between Lichfield and Burton-on-Trent, once a coaching- and posting-house famous in all that countryside as the “Flitch of Bacon” ”

“ Walter Rye, much of the interior helps us to realise what an old inn looked like two or three centuries ago. But the Maid’s Head has a more ancient history, and can boast of a Norman cellar (a relic of the Bishop’s Palace) , while in the drawing-room, a real fifteenth-century fireplace, discovered in the thickness of the wall, has been opened up and correctly fitted with dogs and hood. [Pg 203] The panelled billiard-room, cosy Jacobean bar, and the music gallery in the assembly room (like the “Elevated Den” in the Bull at Rochester) , are all delightful. ”