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

Xiv INTRODUCTION.
The patent, which bears date the r3th day of August, 6 James I.
(16o8), is regarded by the Temples as their document of title against
all corners, and in so far as any trust is thus created the benchers,
having elected to receive the king's patent upon those terms, would
seem to be liable for the performance of the duties, if any, thereby
imposed. It should, however, I think be regarded not in the light
of an original grant conferring upon the Temples a title and a right
which they had not theretofore possessed, but rather as a patent, which
for a consideration adequate in the case of a confirmation, but quite
inadequate in the case of an original grant quieted their otherwise
unimpeachable title, and confirmed the benchers in their possession
of the New Temple, and in those rights, franchises, and privileges
which they had claimed and exercised from time immemorial. I t
commences in somewhat grandiloquent form :1
" Whereas our Realm of England having been for so many
ages exceedingly prosperous in the arts of Peace and War, and
having by the singular Providence of God in his own time devolved
upon us by hereditary right, is sensible that the great part of its
welfare is justly owing to the antient and proper laws of that
realm tried through a long series of ages and particularly adapted
to that populous and warlike nation and approved by constant
experience, and whereas the Inns of the Inner and Middle Temple
London being two out of those four Colleges the most famous of all
Europe as always abounding with persons devoted to the study of
the aforesaid laws and experienced therein have been by the free
bounty of our progenitors Kings of England, for a long time
dedicated to the use of the students and professors of the said laws
to which as the best seminaries of learning and education very many
young men eminent for rank of family and their endowments of
mind and body, have daily resorted from all parts of this realm and
from which many men in our own times as well as in the times of our
progenitors have by reason of their very great merits been advanced
to discharge the public and arduous functions as well of the State
as of Justice, in which they have exhibited great examples of
P. 337
The original patent is in Latin. I use the translation given in the Appendix to
the " Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the arrangements in the
Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery for promoting the study of the Law and Jurisprudence,"
London, 1855, p. 207.