Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
The six o'clock suppers of the lawyers were no light repasts, but hearty meals of meat and bread, washed down by 'green pots' of ale and wine. When 'the horn' sounded for supper, the student was in most cases better able to see the truth of knotty points than when in compliance with etiquette he bowed to the benchers, and asked if it was their pleasure to hear a moot.
It had the usual three courts, an outer, middle, and inner one, and in the middle court a number of students were seated on benches. I am afraid that I rather puzzled our fat Chinese interpreter by inquiring of him whether these were the local Benchers of the Middle Temple. The Chinese dislike to foreigners is well known, so is the term "foreign devils," which is applied to them.
Maseres, an excellent Whig, a good mathematician, and a respected lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait in Charles Lamb's Old Benchers. It maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in 1792 Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions, for which the necessary funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all military charges.
The 'great fire' of 1678-9 having destroyed the Temple Cloisters, some of the benchers proposed to erect chambers on the ground, to and fro upon which law-students had for generations walked whilst they wrangled aloud; but the Earl of Nottingham, recalling the days when young Heneage Finch used to put cases with his contemporary students, strangled the proposal at its birth, and Sir Christopher Wren subsequently built the Cloisters which may be seen at the present day.
Among the best of his essays are Dream Children, Poor Relations, The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century, Old China, Roast Pig, A Defense of Chimneysweeps, A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis, and The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple.
After nearly four years' retirement he petitioned the benchers for his restoration, which they accorded on October 30, 1601, upon his making a public submission in the hall, and asking pardon of Mr. Martin, who at once generously forgave him."
"On each side," says Dugdale, "as His Majesty passed, stood the Reader's servants in scarlet cloaks and white tabba doublets; there being a way made through the wall into the Temple Gardens; and above them on each side the benchers, barristers, and other gentlemen of the society, all in their gowns and formalities, the loud music playing from the time of his landing till he entered the hall; where he was received with xx violins, which continued as long as his majesty stayed."
Numerous entries in the records of the inns testify to the importance assigned by the olden lawyers to their periodic feasts; and though in the fluctuations of public opinion with regard to the effects of dramatic amusements, certain benchers, or even all the benchers of a particular inn, may be found at times discountenancing the custom of presenting masques, the revels were usually diversified and heightened by stage plays.
The bar have their messes, the students their tables apart; the benchers sit at the high table on the raised platform surrounded by pictures of judges of the law and portraits of royal personages who have honoured its festivities with their presence and patronage. Pen looked about, on his first introduction, not a little amused with the scene which he witnessed.
"He is," answered Heriot; "and has escaped with a rebuke from the benchers, for interfering in such a matter as your lordship's. The Court desire to keep well with the young Templars in these times of commotion, or he had not come off so well." "That is the only word of comfort I have heard from you," replied Nigel.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking