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

INTRODUCTION. xv
prudence and integrity, to the no small honour of the said profession
and adornment of this realm and the good of the whole commonwealth
as is to us abundantly manifest."
It then proceeds to grant and confirm to Sir J ulius Cxsar,
otherwise Adelmary (of the Inner Temple), Knight, Chancellor, and
Under Treasurer of the Exchequer, Sir Henry Montague, Knight
Recorder of London and of our Counsel in the law (of the Middle
Temple), William Towse, Esq., treasurer of the Inner Temple,'
Richard Daston, Esq., treasurer of the Middle Temple, and the
rest of the benchers (by name) of the two inns, their heirs and
assigns, all the inns and buildings known as the Inner and the
Middle or the New Temple, together with the Temple bridge, and
the yearly rent of ,4.bc. formerly payable by each inn towards the
estate of S. John of Jerusalem. It then grants to the benchers the
church with the rest of the ecclesiastical portion of the Temple
as follows :
" Also all that Church, Edifices and Buildings of the Church
used for or dedicated to Divine Worship, Prayers, and celebrating
the Sacraments and Sacramentals, commonly called the Temple
Church, situate within the site, circuit and precincts of the aforesaid
Inns, Messuages and other the premises above, by these presents
before granted, or any of them ; and all that the Chancel and Nave
and Bellfry of the same Church, with the Bells, being in the same,
Mr. William Towse was admitted in November, 1571, and was then described
as of Hingham, Norfolk. He was called to the bench in January, 1594, and elected
treasurer in 1607. He was at one time M.P. for the Rape of Bramber and for p. 30
Colchester, 1620-25. Two of his sons were subsequently admitted to the Inner
Temple. He is probably the person referred to on several occasions in John Manningham's
diary as having told anecdotes of living personages, viz. : Sir Henry Yelverton,
Chief Justice Anderson, Chief Baron Manwood, and others. He also gave to Manningham
the lines which Spencer is said to have written when he could not get from
the Queen payment for his verses :
" It pleased your Grace upon a tyme
To graunt me reason for my ryme,
But from that tyme untill this season
I heard of neither ryme nor reason."
He is also responsible for a humorous but scandalous story of Burbage, Shakespeare,
and a certain citizen's wife of London during Burbage's performance of Richard III.
He was made a serjeant-at-law and left the inn in I614.—Diary of John Manning - PP. 31, 86
ham, of the Middle Temple and of Bradhourne, Kent, 1602- 1603. Published by the
Camden Society, London, 1365, pp. 39, 40, 41, 43, 74.