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

INTRODUCTION. XXVil
of their fellows should be arrested on mesne process within their
limits, and Chief Justice Holt, as late as the year 1697, was called
upon to adjudicate between the officers who had arrested a debtor
and the templars who had rescued him from custody.'
The benchers of the two inns, having in due course secured
and enrolled their patent, and having thus become for the first
time possessors of the ecclesiastical portion of the New Temple,
naturally directed their attention to the structural condition of the
Temple church. This antient building, erected during the reign of
Henry II., had from thence until the reformation been under the
fostering care first of the knights templars, and secondly, after a
brief interval, under that of the knights of S. John. The lawyers
while paying rent for their holding, and having the advantages of
the services of the church, contributed spasmodically and of their
free will towards the maintenance and the sustentation of the
services and the priests. From the reformation to the reign of
King James, a period of about seventy years, the church with its
churchyard seems to have been much neglected. While the two
societies discussed the appointment of readers, preachers, and lecturers,
they spent little, if any, money upon the fabric or upon the
internal or external repairs of a building which, however convenient
or appurtenant to themselves, was not their own property and could
at any moment have been removed from their control. The church
had thus fallen into an almost ruinous condition. The roof was
dilapidated ; the glass in the windows was broken ; the venerable
monuments of antiquity, and the more modern, but not less costly and
elegant structures of the Elizabethan era, unprotected from injury by
accident or design, had fallen into decay ; the pews were rotten, and
even the iron bars that should have held the windows were themselves
consumed by rust. A shed erected by Middleton the clerk
adjoined the church on the north side, and was a cause of offence
through its insanitary condition. Clothes were washed and dried
in the churchyard, to which outlaws and disorderly persons readily
obtained access, and using it as a place of sanctuary from sheriffs
and bailiffs, brought an atmosphere of brawls and pestilence into the
seclusion of the Temple. The benchers of the two inns forthwith
1 See a letter to Coffin, dated 7th August, 1697, " Historical MSS. Commission,"
Fifth Report, App., p. 386.