T There are no more peaceful gardens in all London than those among the venerable buildings devoted to the study of the law. There is a sense of dignity and repose, the moment one has entered from the noisy thoroughfares which surround these quiet courts. They may be dark, dull, and dingy, as seen by a Dickens, and sombre and serious, to those whose business lies there; but to the ordinary Londoner, who loves the old world of the City, and the links that bind the present with the past, there are no more reposeful places than these gardens. The courts and buildings seem peopled with those who have worked and lived there. If stones could speak, what tales some of these could tell!

The best-known, perhaps, of the gardens are those belonging to the Inner and Middle Temple, as their green lawns are visible from the Embankment. They add greatly to the charm of one of London’s most beautiful roadways, now, alas! desecrated by the rush of electric trams, and its fine young trees sacrificed to make yet more rapid the stream of beings hourly passing between South London and the City. The modern whirl of business life can leave nothing untouched in this age of bustle, money-making, ceaseless toil, and care. Even pleasures have to be provided by united effort, and partake of noise and hurry. Thought and contemplation are hardly counted among the pleasures of life; yet to those who value them, even to look through the iron railings on the smooth turf brings a sense of relief. Even to those who scarcely seem to feel it, the very existence of these haunts of comparative peace, which flash on their vision as they hurry by, leaves something, a subtle influence, a faint impression on the brain. It must make a difference to a child who knows nothing beyond the noisy streets and alleys in which its lot is cast, to hear the rooks caw and the birds sing in the quiet gardens of Gray’s Inn. It must come as a welcome relief, even though unperceived and unappreciated, from the din and clatter in which most of its days are passed. One cannot be too grateful that it has not been thought necessary to change and modernise “our English juridical university.”

Although the four great Inns of Court are untouched, the lesser Inns have vanished or are vanishing. Clement’s Inn has gone. The garden there was small, but had a special feature of its own—a sun-dial upheld by the kneeling figure of a blackamoor. This is now preserved in the Temple Garden, where it appeared soon after Clement’s Inn was disestablished in 1884. Clement’s Inn, which appertained to the Inner Temple, was so named from the Church of St. Clement Danes and St. Clement’s Well, where “the City Youth on Festival Days used to entertain themselves with a variety of Diversions.” The sun-dial is said to have been presented to the Inn by a Holles, Lord Clare, and some writers state that it was brought from Italy. It was, however, more probably made in London by John Van Nost, a Dutch sculptor, who came to England in William III.’s time, and established himself in Piccadilly. When he died in 1711 the business was continued by John Cheere, brother of Sir Henry Cheere, who executed various monuments in Westminster Abbey. Similar work is known to have issued from this studio. At Clifford’s Inn, which was also attached to the Inner Temple, there is still a vestige of the garden, but it looks a miserable doomed wreck, a few black trees rising among heaps of earth and rubbish. It was described in 1756 as “an airy place, and neatly kept; the garden being inclosed with a pallisado Pale, and adorned with Rows of Lime trees, set round the gravel Plats and gravel walks.” Its present forlorn appearance is certainly not suggestive of its past glories. Barnard’s Inn has been converted into a school by the Mercers’ Company; it also has its court and trees on a very small scale. Staples Inn, so familiar from the timbered, gabled front it presents to Holborn, carefully preserved by the Prudential Assurance Company, its present owners, still has its quiet little quadrangle of green at the back. It was of that Dickens wrote such an inimitable description. “It is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing streets imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his boots.” Furnival’s, Thavies’, and all the other Inns famous in olden days, have disappeared, and their quiet little gardens with them.

The Temple Gardens are larger now than in the earlier days of their history, as then there was nothing to keep the Thames within its channel at high tide. The landing steps from the river were approached by a causeway of arches across the muddy banks. It was not until 1528 that a protecting wall was built, and a pathway ran outside the wall between it and the river. Gardens must have existed on this site from a very early date. When the Templars moved there from Holborn and built the church in 1185, it was all open country round, with a few great houses and conventual buildings standing in their own orchards and gardens. After the suppression of the Order, it was in the hands of Aimer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and in 1324 the land was given to the Knights of St. John. As they had their own buildings and church not far off, they granted it “to the Students of the Common Lawes of England: in whose possession the same hath sithence remained.” All the consecrated land, and all within the City, was included in the grant to the Knights of St. John: besides this there was some land outside the City, or the Outer Temple, part of which remained in secular hands, and in later times was covered by Essex House, with its famous gardens. The section belonging to the Law Societies, beyond the City, is spoken of in early records as the Outer Garden, and from time to time buildings were erected on it—at first under protest, as in 1565 there was an order “for the plucking down of a study newly erected,” and again in 1567, “the nuisance made by Woodye, by building his house in the Outer Garden, shall be abated and plucked down, or as much thereof as is upon Temple ground.” All this garden has long ago been completely built over, and the large spaces now forming the Temple Gardens are those anciently known as the “Great Garden,” belonging to the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple Garden. The Outer Temple (never another Inn) was merely the ground outside the limits of the City.

The long green slopes down to the Embankment, are much larger than the older gardens, as the wall which was built in 1528 to keep out the river, cut across from where No. 10 King’s Bench Walk now stands. The wall must have been a vast improvement, and was greatly appreciated. In 1534 a vote of thanks was passed by the “parliament” of the Inner Temple to the late Treasurer, John Parkynton, who had “takyn many and sundrie payns in the buylding of the walle betwene the Thamez and the garden,” for which “greate dyligens” they gave unto him “hartey thankes.” And, indeed, the garden must sorely have needed this protection. It is difficult to picture the Temple in the sixteenth century, and the little gardens must have been as bewildering as the present courts and buildings. In the records there are references to various gardens, no doubt small enclosures like the present courts, besides the Great Garden and the kitchen-garden. There was the nut garden, perhaps adorned with nut trees, as Fig-tree Court probably was with figs. There is more than one record of payments for attending to the fig-tree or painting rails round it. In 1610, just at the time James I. brought them into notice, a mulberry was “set in Fairfield’s Court.” In 1605 seats were set “about the trees in Hare’s Court”; thus all the courts were more or less little gardens. In 1510 a chamber is assigned to some one “in the garden called le Olyvaunte.” This was probably the Elephant, from a sign carved or painted to distinguish a particular house facing it. There was similarly “le Talbott,” probably from a greyhound sign, in another court. The houses facing the Great Garden apparently had steps descending into it from the chief rooms, and it was a special privilege to have your staircase opening on to it. Thus, “May 1573, Mr. Wyott and Mr. Hall, licensed to have ‘a steeyrs’ (stairs) from their chamber into the garden.” The Great Garden was constantly being encroached on as new chambers were built. Entries in the records with regard to permission to build into the garden often occur; for instance—

“1581. Thomas Compton ... to build ... within the compass of the garden or little Court ... from the south corner of the brick wall of the said garden ... 57 feet ... and from the said wall into the garden 22 feet.”

On one occasion a license to build was exceeded, and the offence further aggravated by cutting down “divers timber trees.” The offender was at first put out of commons, and fined £20, which was afterwards mitigated to £5, with the addition of a most wise proviso, that “he shall plant double the number of trees he caused to be cut down.” Would that the fault of felling timber always met with the same punishment!

When houses were put on the site of the present Paper Buildings in 1610, the Great Garden was cut in two, and the eastern portion went to form the broad stretch with its trees known as King’s Bench Walk. Elm trees were planted, and the walks and seats under them repaired from time to time, and kept in good order. The part to the west was carefully tended, and became from that year the chief garden. In James I.’s reign, that age of gardening, when every house of any pretensions was having its garden enlarged, and Bacon was laying out the grounds of Gray’s Inn, the Temple was not behind-hand. The accounts show constant repairs and additions and buying of trees. The items for painting posts and rails are very frequent. Probably they do not always refer to outer palings, but it may be that the Tudor fashion of railing round the beds, with a low trellis and posts at the angles, still prevailed. One of the largest items of the expenses was for making “the pound” in 1618. This, it is said, was a pond, but no record of digging it out, or filling it with water occurs, while all the payments in connection with it went to painters or carpenters, and therefore it was more probably a kind of garden-house, much in favour at that time, made by the wall, to command a view over the river. The chief items with regard to it are:—

“1618, To John Fielde, the carpenter, for making ‘the pound’ in the garden, £19.”

“To Bowden, the painter, for stopping and ‘refreshing’ the rails in the ‘wakes’ (walks), the posts, seats and balusters belonging to the same, and for stopping and finishing the ‘pound’ by the waterside, £9, 10s.”

Again in 1639 the entry certainly implies some kind of summer-house and not “a pond”: “Edward Simmes, carpenter, for repairing ‘the pound’ and other seats in the garden and walks, &c., £15, 8s.” There must have been another summer-house at the same time, unless the sums paid to a plasterer “for work done about the summer-house in the garden,” in 1630, refers to the same “pound.”

A great deal seems to have been done to the Garden during the first few years of the Commonwealth, and large sums were expended in procuring new gravel and turf: “392 loads of gravel at 2s. 6d. the load” is one entry. But the chief work was the re-turfing. An arrangement was made, by payment of various small sums to the poor of Greenwich, to cut 3000 turfs on Blackheath, and convey them in lighters to the Temple Stairs. A second transaction procured them 2000 more, each turf being a foot broad and a yard long. These amounts would cover a third of an acre with turf. The head gardeners seem to have been particularly unruly people. Although they remained in office many years, there were frequent complaints. On one occasion this official had cut down trees, another time he had the plague, and his house was frequented by rogues and beggars. At first the gardener’s house was on the present King’s Bench Walk side of the Garden, near the river; later on, near where Harcourt Buildings are now. In 1690 the house, then in Middle Temple Lane, was turned into an ale-house, and evidently none of the quietest, for the occupier was forbidden to sell drink, and the “door out of the gardener’s lodge towards the water gate” was ordered to be bricked up, so as to prevent all the riffraff from the river rioting in his rooms. Yet the post descended from father to son. In 1687 Thomas Elliott succeeded his father, Seth Elliott, who had been there some years, and when in 1708 Charles Gardner had taken the second Elliott’s place, his daughter Elizabeth’s name occurs as a recipient of money, and Elliott himself received a pension of £20 a-year, although he was the culprit of the riotous ale-house. During the years succeeding the Restoration, the Garden seems to have been little touched. The kitchen-garden would still be maintained, and either it was farmed by the gardener, or its supplies were inadequate, as on fast-days there was always a special payment to the gardener for vegetables. Such items as the following are of frequent occurrence: “Sallating for the hall in grass week, strewings and ‘bow pots’ for the hall in Easter and Trinity terms.”

Though the French fashions in gardening of Charles II.’s reign do not seem to have affected the Temple precincts, yet the Dutch influence that came in with William and Mary made itself felt. A small garden was specially set apart for the Benchers, and done up entirely in the prevailing style. A piece of ground between King’s Bench Office and Serjeants’ Inn was made use of for this. It had been let to the Alienation Office, but after the Great Fire the Temple resumed the control of it, and finally did it up and replanted it for the use of the Benchers. It was known as the “Benchers’,” the “Little” or the “Privy” Garden, and great care, attention, and money were expended on it. Turf, gravel, and plants were bought; a sun-dial put on the wall; orange trees set out in tubs; and a fountain erected in the middle. This fountain must have been the chief feature of the Garden, and from the immense amount of care it required to keep it in order, it seems that it was one of those elaborate “waterworks,” without which no garden was then complete. Such fountains were made with secret arrangements for turning on the water, which dropped from birds’ bills, or spurted out of dolphins or such-like, with an unpleasant suddenness which gave the unwary visitor a shower-bath. Other fountains played tunes or set curious machinery in motion, or otherwise surprised the beholder. From the descriptions, this one in the Benchers’ Garden doubtless concealed some original variation. It consisted of a lion’s face with a copper scallop shell, and a copper cherry-tree with branches, and perhaps the water dropped from the leaves. One payment in 1700 occurs for “a new scallop shell to the fountain, for a cock and a lion’s face to draw the water out of the fountain, and for keeping the fountain in repair, £12.” The copper cherry-tree was painted, and perhaps the Pegasus—the arms of the Inner Temple—figured in the strange medley, as the cost of painting the tree and “gilding the horse” are together paid to the man “Fowler,” who had charge of the fountain. The “best way to bring the water” had to be carefully considered for these “waterworks” which Fowler was designing and carrying out, and it evidently was brought up to the pitch of perfection required of a fountain in those days. There was also a summer-house with a paved floor, and an alcove with seats. Altogether, even without the glories of the strange fountain, the little enclosed Dutch garden must have been an attractive place.

While the Benchers’ Garden was being made, the Great Garden was not neglected. Its form was altered to suit the prevailing taste. This remodelling must have begun in the winter of 1703, as it was then resolved that “the trees in the Great Garden be cut down, and the Garden to be put in the same model as the gardener hath proposed.” The delightful terrace, which is still one of the most beautiful features in the Garden, existed before these alterations began, but the sun-dial which still adorns it was added during these changes. The payment for it was made to Strong, who was contractor for St. Paul’s under Wren: “To Edward Strong, for the pedestal for the dial in the Great Garden steps, &c., £25.” The beautiful gates of wrought iron were put up in 1730. The design shows the arms of Gray’s Inn, as well as the winged horse of the Inner Temple, in compliment to the other learned society, its close ally. In the same way the Pegasus occurs at Gray’s Inn. It was probably along this terrace that some of the orange trees in pots were placed during the summer. The pots in which these oranges and other “greens” were grown seem to have been specially decorative. It was a serious offence when Allgood, a member of the Inn, broke some, and was obliged to “furnish other pots of like fashion and value,” otherwise he would “be put out of commons.” After this others were purchased, as the payment of £8 was made “for a large mould, carved in wood, for casting of earthen pots for the Garden”; and in other years further similar expenses occur, one in 1690 “to the potter for a large pot made for the Garden, painted in oil, £1, 5s.” Some of the plants grown would stand the winter in the open, but after the oranges made their appearance a shelter had to be provided. Green-houses owed their origin to this necessity, and as they were only used in winter, and merely sheltered the large pots of “greens,” these green-houses or orangeries were built like rooms, and used as summer-houses during warm months. All the larger gardens had their green-houses, but the smaller proprietors frequently sent their plants away to a nurseryman to be housed during the winter. Even the “greens” at Kensington Palace were kept by London and Wise, until the new orangery was built. The Temple orange trees were first sent to the house of Cadrow at Islington. In 1704 the green-house seems to have been made, and used as a garden-house in summer. Such items in the accounts as “a chimney-glass and sconces for the green-house” show that it was in the usual solid architectural style then in fashion. That the “panierman,” an officer, one of whose duties was to summon members to meals by blowing a horn, was appointed to take charge of it as well as of the library, is a further proof that it bore the character of a room, and was more or less outside the gardener’s department. The panierman also had the care of the elaborate fountain, after it had been supervised for some years by the maker. This green-house stood at the end of the terrace, which still runs parallel with Crown Office Row, and near the site of Harcourt Buildings, behind the gardener’s house. This gardener’s house was pulled down two or three years later to make way for Harcourt Buildings, which was joined to the summer-house. The first or ground floor opened on to the garden below the “paved walk” or terrace, on which level stood the summer-house.

The most fascinating feature of a garden ought to be its flowers, and of these also some particulars can be gleaned from the accounts. There is enough to show that the Temple Garden was quite up to date in its horticulture, and that it followed fashion as closely in its plants as in its design. It is not surprising to find Dutch bulbs, and especially tulips, being bought when such a lover of those flowers as Sir Thomas Hanmer was a member. He was one of those who devoted much time to the culture of that flower, when the tulip mania was at its height, and raised new varieties, which were known by his name, “the agate Hanmer.” In 1703 the list of bulbs purchased is carefully noted. There were “200 ‘junquiles’ at 6s. a hundred; for 200 tulips at 5s. a hundred; for 100 yellow Dutch crocus, for 50 Armathagalum.” The spelling of “junquiles” is much more correct than our modern “jonquil,” and all the old writers would have written it so. Parkinson, in 1629, describes them as “Narcissus juncifolius” or the “Junquilia or Rush Daffodill”; but “Ornithogalum” was too much for the Temple scribe. The “Ornithogalum” or “Starre of Bethlehem,” and probably one of the rarer varieties, must be meant by “Armathagalum.” The Arabian variety was then “nursed in gardens,” but it should be “housed all the winter, that so it may bee defended from the frosts,” wrote Parkinson, and sadly admitted that the two roots sent to him “out of Spain” had “prospered not” “for want of knowledge” of this “rule.” There was also the “Starre flower of Æthiopia,” which “was gathered by some Hollanders on the West side of the Cape of Good Hope”; and this is more likely to have been the variety bought for the Temple with the other Dutch bulbs. Among the other purchases were various shrubs, on which the topiary art was then commonly practised. There were “15 yew trees for the Great Garden in pots, ... 4 box trees for the grass plots, ... 12 striped ‘fillerayes’”—this latter being variegated phillyreas (most likely angustifolia), which were largely used for cutting into quaint shapes. Another account is for “28 standard laurels, 4 ‘perimic’ (laurels), 6 junipers, 4 hollies, and 2 perimic box trees.” These “perimetric” trees had already gone through the necessary clipping and training, to enable them to take their place in the trim Dutch garden. Another year flowering shrubs are got for the Benchers’ Garden: “2 messerius at 2s., and 2 lorrestines at 2s.” The Daphne mezereum had been a favourite in English gardens from the earliest times, and the laurestinus (Viburnum tinus) came from South Europe in the sixteenth century. Parkinson, the most attractive of all the old gardening authors, has a delightfully true description of the “Laurus Tinus,” with its “many small white sweete-smelling flowers thrusting together, ... the edges whereof have a shew of a wash purple or light blush in them; which for the most part fall away without bearing any perfect ripe fruit in our countrey: yet sometimes it hath small black berries, as if they were good, but are not”! Fruit-trees were also to be found—peaches, “nectrons,” cherries, and plums, besides figs and mulberries. That the walls were covered with climbing roses and jessamine is certain, from the oft-recurring cost of nailing them up. “Nails and list for the jessamy wall,” and the needful bits of old felt required to fasten them up, was another time supplied by “hatt parings for the jessamines.”

Thus it is easy, bit by bit, out of the old accounts, to piece together the Garden, until the mind’s eye can see back into the days of Queen Anne, and take an imaginary walk through it on a fine spring evening. The Bencher walks out of the large window of the “green-house” on to the terrace, where the sun-dial points the hour: the orange trees, glossy and fresh from their winter quarters, stand in stiff array, in the large artistic pots. Down the steps, a few stiff beds are bright with Dutch bulbs in flower. The turf, well rolled (for a new stone roller has just been purchased), stretches down to the river between straight lines of quaintly cut box, yews, and hollies. He sees Surrey hills clear in the early evening light, and the barges sail by, and boats pass up and down the river. He may linger on one of the seats in the garden-house overlooking the river, or wander back under the stately elms of King’s Bench Walk, to rest awhile in the Privy Garden, where the air is scented with mezereum, and cooled by the drops that fall from the metal leaves hanging over the basin of the fountain.

The Middle Temple, too, had its Benchers’ Garden, and part of it survives to this day in the delightful Fountain Court. The Benchers’ Garden was larger, covering the ground where Garden Court now stands, up to the wall of the famous gardens of Essex House. A garden covered the space where the library has been built, and the terrace and steps in front of the fountain reached right across to the Essex House wall. Below the beautiful old hall which Queen Elizabeth opened in person, and where Shakespeare’s contemporaries witnessed “Twelfth Night,” lay the rest of the Garden, with green lawns and shady trees down the water’s edge. The fountain, once the glory of the Benchers’ private garden, is still one of the most delightful in all London. Sir Christopher Hatton, whose garden of Ely Place—wrung by Queen Elizabeth from the unwilling Bishop—was not far off, was an admirer of the Middle Temple fountain. It was kept, he says, “in so good order as always to force its stream to a vast and almost incredible altitude. It is fenced with timber palisades, constituting a quadrangle, wherein grow several lofty trees, and without are walks extending on every side of the quadrangle, all paved with Purbeck, very pleasant and delightful.” In an eighteenth-century picture, with groups of strollers and a lady passing the gay company in her sedan chair, the palings are superseded by fine iron railings enclosing the lofty jet, its marble basin, and shady trees. The pavement ended with the terrace wall overlooking the garden below, and the Thames covered at high tide what is now the lower part of the lawn. The Fountain Court has inspired many a thought which has found expression in prose and verse, but no picture is more vivid or well known than the figure of Ruth Pinch, in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” waiting for her brother “with the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the fountain,” or the description at the end, of that crowning day to her happiness, when she walks there with John Westlock, and “Brilliantly the Temple Fountain splashed in the sun, and laughingly its liquid music played, and merrily the idle drops of water danced and danced, and peeping out in sport among the trees, plunged lightly down to hide themselves, as little Ruth and her companion came towards it.” The fountain has suffered some modernising changes since Dickens wrote those lines; but in spite of them there is still music in its sound, which calls up dreams of other ages and of brighter gardens as it tosses its spray into the murky air.

Of all the incidents that are associated with particular places, none stands out more vividly than the scene told by Shakespeare, of the first beginning to the Wars of the Roses in the Temple Garden.

Richard Plantagenet, with the Earls of Somerset, Suffolk, and Warwick, Vernon, and a lawyer, enter the Temple Garden (“Henry VI.” Pt. I. Act 2, sc. iv.).

With such a tradition the Temple Garden should never be without its roses. They are one of those friendly plants which will do their best to fight against fog and smoke, and flower boldly for two or three years in succession: so a supply of red and white, and the delightful Rosa mundi, the “York and Lancaster,” could without much difficulty be seen there every summer. Certainly some of the finest roses in existence have been in the Temple Gardens, as the Flower Shows, which are looked forward to by all lovers of horticulture, have for many years been permitted to take place in these historic grounds. How astonished those adherents of the red or white roses would have been to see the colours, shades, and forms which the descendants of those briars now produce. The Plantagenet Garden would not contain many varieties, although every known one was cherished in every garden, as roses have always been first favourites. Besides the briars, dog roses, and sweet briars, there was the double white and double red, a variety of Rosa gallica. Many so-called old-fashioned roses, such as the common monthly roses, came to England very much later, and the vast number of gorgeous hybrids are absolutely new. Elizabethan gardens had a fair show of roses with centifolia, including moss and Provence roses, and York and Lancaster, Rosa lutea, musk, damask, and cinnamon roses in several varieties; and as the old records show, the Temple Garden was well supplied with roses. All these probably flourished there in the days of Shakespeare, and would readily suggest the scene he immortalised.

Among the spirits that haunt the Temple Garden, there is none that seems to cling to it more than that of Charles Lamb. It should be a pride of these peaceful gardens that they helped to mould that lovable and unselfish character. A schoolfellow, who describes his ways as a boy at Christ’s Hospital, recalls how all his young days were spent in the solemn surrounding of the Temple, and how, while at school, “On every half holiday (and there were two in the week), in ten minutes he was in the gardens, on the terrace, or at the fountain of the Temple. Here was his home, here his recreation; and the influence they had on his infant mind is vividly shown in his description of the old Benchers.”

“Shadows we are and like shadows depart,” suggests the sun-dial on the wall of Pump Court, but shadows of such gentle spirits as Charles Lamb leave something behind, and those “footprints on the sands of time” are nowhere more traceable than in these solemn precincts of law with their quiet, restful gardens.

The attractions of the Temple are so great, one feels loth to cross the noisy thoroughfare and plunge through the traffic till the stately old gateway out of Chancery Lane, on which Ben Jonson is said to have worked, affords an opening towards the spacious gardens of Lincoln’s Inn.

Lincoln’s Inn Gardens have a special claim to antiquity as they are partly on the site of the famous garden of the Earl of Lincoln, of which some of the accounts are preserved in a splendid big old manor roll now at the Record Office. It is supposed that at his death in 1311, Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, assigned these lands to the “Professors of the Law as a residence.” Additions were made later from the ground belonging to the Bishop of Chichester, round the palace which Ralph Neville had built in 1228. Part of the site was the “coney garth,” which belonged to one William Cotterell, and hence is often mentioned as “Cotterell’s Garden.” Garden of course only meant a garth or yard, and though the name now signifies an enclosure for plants, in early times other enclosures were common. There was the “grass yard” or lawn, the “cook’s garth” or kitchen-garden, and “coney garth” where rabbits were kept, as well as the “wyrt yard” or plant yard, the “ort yard” or orchard, apple yard, cherry yard, and so on. The coney garth was not a mere name, but was well stocked with game, and even at a much later date, from Edward IV. to Henry VIII., there were various ordinances in force for punishing law students who hunted rabbits with bows and arrows or darts.

In the first year of Queen Elizabeth the Garden was separated from the fields by a clay embankment, and a little later a brick wall was added, with a gate into the fields, which is probably the same as the present little gate to the north of the new hall, at the end of the border, shown in the illustration. The Garden continued much further along the wall then, and only was curtailed when the new hall and library were built in 1843. The delightful terrace which is raised against the wall overlooking the “fields” was made in 1663. On June 27th of that year, Pepys, who on other occasions mentions his walks there with his wife, went to see the alterations. “So to Lincoln’s Inne, and there walked up and down to see the new garden which they are making, and will be very pretty.” The outside world seems to have had easy access to the gardens of all the Inns of Court in those days, but it was regarded as a special privilege granted to a very wide circle, and a favour not accorded to the public at large. In the Tatler occur such passages as, “I went into Lincoln’s Inn walks, and having taken a round or two I sat down according to the allowed familiarity of these places.” Again, “I was last week taking a solitary walk in the garden of Lincoln’s Inn, a favour that is indulged me by several of the benchers who are my intimate friends.”

They were, however, so much frequented by all the fashionable world of London, that the foreigner arriving there naturally took them for public gardens. Mr. Grosley, who came to London in 1765, thus describes them:—

“Besides St. James’s Park, the Green Park, and Hyde Park, the two last of which are continuations of the first, which, like the Tuileries at Paris, lie at the extremity of the metropolis, London has several public walks, which are much more agreeable to the English, as they are less frequented and more solitary than the Park. Such are the gardens contained within the compass of the Temple, of Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn. They consist of grass plots, which are kept in excellent order, and planted with trees, either cut regularly, or with high stocks: some of them have a part laid out for culinary uses. The grass plots of the gardens at Lincoln’s Inn are adorned with statues, which, taken all together, form a scene very pleasing to the eye.”

The students must certainly have aimed at keeping their gardens from the vulgar gaze, and showed their displeasure at some one who had built a house with windows overlooking the Garden in 1632 in an uproarious manner. They flung brickbats at the offending window until “one out of the house discharged haile shot upon Mr. Attornie’s sonne’s face, which though by good chance it missed his eyes yet it pitifully mangled his visage.”

Old maps of the gardens show a wall dividing the large upper garden from the smaller, but by 1772 the partition had disappeared. It was doubtless unnecessary when the terrace was made and the rabbits done away with.

The 1658 map with the wall in it shows the upper garden intersected by four paths, and an avenue of trees round three sides, and the small garden with a single row of trees round it divided into two large grass plots. The lovely shady avenue below the terrace in the large garden has still a great charm, and although not so extensive as it once was, the great green-sward and walks seem very spacious in these days of crowding. The terrace overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with the broad walk and border of suitable old-fashioned herbaceous plants, has great attractions. The view from here must have improved since the days when the Fields were a wild-looking place of evil repute, and the scene of bloody executions. In the lonely darkness below the terrace wall, deeds of violence were only too common.

Certainly when one is sentimental over the departed charms of Old London, it would be an excellent antidote to call up some of the inconveniences that electric light and the metropolitan police have banished.

There is more character about the gardens of Gray’s Inn than either the Temple or Lincoln’s Inn. They have come down with but little alteration from the hands of that great lover of gardens, Bacon. But long before his time gardens existed. The land on which Gray’s Inn stands formed part of a prebend of St. Paul’s of the manor of Portpoole, and subsequently belonged to the family of Grey de Wilton, and in the fourteenth century the Inn of Court was established. Between its grounds and the villages of Highgate and Hampstead was an unbroken stretch of open country. There, in Mary’s reign, Henry Lord Berkeley used daily to hunt “in Gray’s Inne fields and in those parts towards Islington and Heygate with his hounds,” and in his company were “many gentlemen of the Innes of Court and others of lower condition ... and 150 servants in livery that daily attended him in their tawny coates.” In Bacon’s time it must still have been as open, and Theobald’s Road a country lane with hedgerows. The Garden already boasted of fine trees, and among the records of the Society there is a list of the elms in 1583 all carefully enumerated, and the exact places they were growing: “In the grene Courte xi Elmes and iii Walnut trees,” and so on. Eighty-seven elms, besides four young elms and one young ash, appear on the list; so the Garden was well furnished with trees even before Bacon commenced his work. Gray’s Inn was the most popular of the four Inns of Court in the Elizabethan period, and many famous men, such as Lord Burghley, belonged to it. It was in 1597 that Bacon took the Garden in hand, some ten years after he became a Bencher. In the accounts of that year £7. 15s. 4d. appears “due to Mr. Bacon for planting of trees in the walkes.” In 1598 it was resolved to “supply more yonge elme trees in the places of such as are decayed, and that a new Rayle and quicksett hedge be sett upon the upper long walke at the good discretion of Mr. Bacon, and Mr. Wilbraham, soe that the charges thereof doe not exceed the sum of seventy pounds.” On 29th April 1600, £60. 6s. 8d. was paid to “Mr. Bacon for money disbursed about garnishing of the walkes.”

Bacon’s own ideas of what a garden should be are so delightfully set forth in his essay on gardens, that the whole as it left his hand is not difficult to imagine. The fair alleys, the great hedge, were essentials, and the green, “because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.” His list of plants which bloom in all the months of the year was compiled of those specially suited “for the Climate of London,” so no doubt some would be included in this Garden under his eye, although they do not appear in the records. He wished “also in the very middle a fair mount,” and even this desire he carried out in Gray’s Inn. In a description of the Garden as late as 1761, a summer-house which Bacon put up in 1609 to the memory of his friend Jeremiah Bettenham is mentioned as only recently destroyed. “Till lately,” it says, “there was a summer-house erected by the great Sir Francis Bacon upon a small mount: it was open on all sides, and the roof supported by slender pillars. A few years ago the uninterrupted prospect of the neighbouring fields, as far as the hills of Highgate and Hampstead, was obstructed by a handsome row of houses on the north; since which the above summer-house has been levelled, and many trees cut down to lay the Garden more open.” The view, even then, was fairly open, as Sir Samuel Romilly, in 1780, complains of the cold, as there was “only one row of houses” between him and Hampstead, and “a north-west wind blows full against” his chambers. This “most gallant prospect into the country, and its beautiful walks” were the great attractions of these Gardens. They appear to have been one of the most fashionable walks, especially on Sundays. Pepys was frequently there, and his diary records, several times, that he went to morning church, then had dinner, then to church again, and after went for a walk in Gray’s Inn. That he met there “great store of gallants,” or “saw many beauties,” is the usual comment after a visit. On one occasion, he took his wife there to “observe the fashions of the ladies,” because she was “making some clothes.” The walks and trees are redolent with associations, and the Gardens, though curtailed, have much the same appearance as of yore. When a portion of the ground was sacrificed to the new buildings, those who loved the Garden deeply bewailed. “Those accursed Verulam Buildings,” wrote Charles Lamb, recalling his early walks in Gray’s Inn Gardens, “had not encroached upon all the east side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering away one of two stately alcoves of the terrace. The survivor stands gaping and relationless, as if it remembered its brother. They are still the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court—my beloved Temple not forgotten—have the gravest character, their aspect being altogether reserved and law-breathing. Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their gravel walks.”

After such a delightful summary of their charms it seems cruel to try and dispel one of their most treasured traditions—namely, that Bacon planted the catalpa. It is a splendid and venerable tree, and there is no wish to pull it from its proud position of the first catalpa planted, and the finest in existence in this country; but it is hard to believe that Bacon planted it, in the light of the history of the plant. There is no mention of a catalpa in any of the earlier writers—Gerard did not know it, and it is not in the later edition of his work by Thomas Johnson, in 1633, or in Parkinson’s “Paradisus,” in 1629, or in Evelyn’s “Sylva,” in 1664, all published after Bacon’s death.

The tree was first described by Catesby in his “Natural History of Carolina,” a splendid folio which appeared in 1731. There it is classed as Bignonia urucu foliis, or Catalpa, as it was not until later that Jussieu separated the genus Catalpa. He says the tree was not known to the inhabitants of Carolina till the seeds “were brought there from the remoter parts of the country,” “and though the inhabitants are little curious in gardening, the uncommon beauty of this tree induced them to propagate it, and it is become an ornament to many of their gardens, and probably will be the same to ours in England, it being as hardy as most of our American plants: many of them, now at Mr. Bacon’s, at Hoxton, having stood out several winters without any protection, except the first year.” Hoxton was then a place famous for its nursery gardens. In 1767, in Catesby’s volume on the trees of North America, he gives the same story, and adds, “in August 1748” it produced, “at Mr. Gray’s, such numbers of blossoms, that the leaves were almost hid thereby.” This Mr. Gray owned the nurseries in Brompton, famous under the management of London and Wise.

In Philip Miller’s dictionary, Catesby’s history of the plant is referred to, and also in 1808, in the Botanical Magazine, when the plant was figured. There it says the plant “has been long an inhabitant of our gardens, being introduced by the same Botanist [Catesby] about the year 1728.” “It bears the smoke of large towns better than most trees; the largest specimen we have ever seen grows in the garden belonging to the Society of Gray’s Inn.” There is no hint that the tree in question could have been here before Catesby’s discovery, and it is not till Loudon’s Encyclopædia in 1822 that the planting is attributed to Bacon. Such a remarkable tree could hardly have escaped all gardeners for more than a century, during a time when gardening was greatly in fashion, and every new plant greedily sought after. We know that nearly a hundred years ago this specimen was the finest in England, and therefore it may have been planted not more than a hundred years or so after Bacon’s death. Raleigh very likely walked with Bacon on the spot where it now stands, but, alas! the possibility that he brought Bacon a tree from Virginia, which was only discovered near the Mississippi a century later, is hardly credible.

The entrance to the Gardens on the Holborn side is through massive wrought-iron gates, on which the date 1723 is legible. The letters “W. I. G.” are the initials of the Treasurer during whose tenure of office they were erected, the “T” above standing for Treasurer. In the Inns of Chancery a “P” for Principal, associated with the various initials, is often to be noticed. These fine gates are a charming approach to the sequestered walks and ancient trees. Gray’s Inn Gardens have another delightful speciality, in that the rooks delight to honour them by building there. They have a warm welcome, and good food in cold weather, and seem likely to remain. Looking through the lofty iron gates, the rooks’ nests are seen, and the pleasant cawing sound adds greatly to the attraction of the place.