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

INTRODUCTION. lxxiii
this requisition, after the names of high officials, of the nobility, various
office holders, eleven judges and fifteen serjeants-at-law, appears the
heading " certain benchers of the Inner Temple," who subscribed
sums from £200 to which they agreed to pay in three instalments.
The names of these benchers are, Sir Richard Shilton, Sir Edward
Littleton (solicitor general), Edward Herbert (the queen's attorney
general), Richard Prytherge, John Wightwick (appointed serjeant in
1640), Edward Bulstrode (Recorder of London), Nicholas Cholmeley,
Thomas Gates (afterwards Baron of the Exchequer), Francis
Courteney, John Vaughan (afterwards Lord Chief J ustice of the
Common Pleas), Henry Wynn, Orlando Bridgman (afterwards Lord
Chief Baron and Lord Keeper), Thomas Dowse, J ohn Were, H umphrey
Hurlestone, Thomas Twisden (afterwards Justice of the King's Bench),
William Robinson, Walter Norborne, Ralph Beard, and Edward
Harrys. The benchers of the other inns made no contributions, or,
if they did, their names are included in some other list. There is
no return of any contribution from the stock of the society, or of
any general assessment upon its members. Nor is there any such
entry in our records which contain references to payments from the
" stock of the house," towards the masque in 1633, and the repairs
of the church in 1638. From these " certain benchers " the names
of Henry Rolle, John Selden, Prideaux, and Aske, are conspicuously
absent. I have only to add in this connection, that Sir Randal
Crewe, cousin and executor of Sir Edward Coke, who had been
appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in 1625, was
dismissed from his office in 1626, by reason of his refusal to give an
opinion in favour of the legality of a forced loan.
Almost contemporaneously with the accession of King Charles
was an outbreak of the plague. The supply of fresh water to the
metropolis by the New River Company, and the somewhat improved
sanitary arrangements of the better class of people, seem to have
had no effect upon its virulence, which continued unabated through
nearly the whole of this reign. Early in 1625 all work in the Temple
was given up. There was no reading in the summer, by reason of
the infection. The meetings of the benchers in Michaelmas term
were, as a matter of precaution, held at Reading. For the same
reason no Christmas commons were kept that year, and extra allow-
' "State Papers, Dom. Car. Add.," vol. dxxxviii., No. 84.
11 IP
I). IP
p. 153