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

INTRODUCTION.
William Glaseor, and Mr. Edward Williams had built certain rooms
near to the chambers so occupied. On the iith November, 1594,
Coke, then attorney-general, was admitted to "all the roomes and
buildinges as well new as old late erected and builded by Edward
Williams now deceased." 1 These chambers, consisting, as it would
appear of several rooms situate in Fuller's Rents, and looking partly
into the earl's garden, and partly into the northern portion of the
alienation garden, were henceforth occupied without alteration by
Sir Edward Coke, who was also admitted by the authority of the
Earl of Leicester or his heir to the garden which the earl had planted
in pursuance of the authority conferred upon him in 1576. This
garden being once made was maintained at the cost of the inn, for I
find from an entry in 1609 that John Dryver was then paid for
p. 44 " seven loads of gravel to mend the Lord Cooke's passage from his
chamber into Sergeant's Inn, and for his own garden, at 14d. the load."
After he was appointed Lord Chief Justice he built for himself a little
p. 217 room used as a passage between those of his chambers which adjoined
the western end of the alienation office, and those in Fuller's Rents.
The position of Coke's residence can thus be clearly ascertained, even
two hundred years after the obliteration of old landmarks by the
Great Fire. Numbers i and 2 Mitre Court Buildings now stand on
the site formerly occupied by Fuller's Rents. A heavy iron gate,
shut at night and opened in the early morning, marks the entry to
Mitre Court and what was formerly Ram Alley. The Mitre Inn still
stands at the top of Mitre Court, a few yards back from the thoroughfare
of Fleet Street. Between the north side of Mitre Court Buildings
and the entrance to Serjeant's Inn are the remains of a small and
much neglected garden. Beyond the garden is a passage leading
into Serjeants' Inn, which is approached by a flight of steps and is
shut off from Mitre Court by a door which at the present day is
seldom if ever closed. Through this private way the lines of which
can still be traced, the compact and wiry figure of the Lord Chief
Justice might perchance have been seen passing between the two
p• 9 inns. He was attended in his chambers by his servant " Mr. Roger
Rogers : gent." who was specially admitted a member of the inn at
his master's request, without any fine, in the February of 1604-5, and
These extracts are from the " Chambers Admittances Book of the Inn," 1554-
I6J4, pp. 119, 147.