Volume II 1603-1660 - The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple

INTRODUCTION.
independent positions. The cultivated and literary tone which distinguished
our society during the long reign of Elizabeth was
maintained during the reigns of James and Charles and under the
dominion of the commonwealth. The series of masques, plays, and
entertainments periodically given until the outbreak of the civil war,
the poems of Beaumont, Browne, and their companions, sufficiently
attest the scholarly geniality and the classical taste of our fellows.
During the period of national tribulation, our society was the home
of a little band of literary and scientific students, of which Selden
and Vaughan were perhaps the centre. Nor even at a later period
when, under Tomlyns and Audley, our fellowship was by no means
satisfactorily represented by its governors, were the sister arts
entirely banished from our house. Music never lost her hold upon
the affections of her votaries, and our artists of the commonwealth
provided the minstrels for the throne.
The members of our inn, who were unanimous in their loyalty
to Queen Elizabeth, were hopelessly divided between the parliament
and the king. Throughout all their differences, however, there was
one subject upon which they were ever in cordial agreement. The
Temple church was not only structurally but sentimentally the centre
of their homes and their associations. From the sealing of the
patent to the present day, it has been an object of profound solicitude
to the fellows of both societies ; and during those times when religious
differences roused the hearts of men to strife and civil war, matters
in any way relating to the church naturally absorbed a great portion
of our history. The Inner and the Middle Temple no sooner
became owners of the church than they joined together at their
great and equal cost to rescue and to restore it from ruin and
neglect. They successfully combined to resent the monarch's meddlesome
interference in 1613. They asserted and fought together for
their independence against the pretensions of the master under
Charles and Laud. They were allied under the protectorate, when,
at much self-sacrifice, with diminishing numbers, and in the stress of
poverty, they kept the fabric sound and in good order, and provided
a sufficient staff of clergymen to perform the services and ministrations
recognized by the existing law. From Land's End to John
o' Groats the parish church, its ministers, its services, its ritual, and
its ornaments formed, during the seventeenth century, a fruitful