CHAPTER IV.
LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
The annals of the legal profession show that the neighborhood of Guildhall was a favorite place of residence with the ancient lawyers, who either held judicial offices within the circle of the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, or whose practice lay chiefly in the civic courts. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was quite a colony of jurists hard by the temple of Gogmagog and Cosineus—or Gog and Magog, as the grotesque giants are designated by the unlearned, who know not the history of the two famous effigies, which originally figured in an Elizabethan pageant, stirring the wonder of the illiterate, and reminding scholars of two mythical heroes about whom the curious reader of this paragraph may learn further particulars by referring to Michael Drayton's 'Polyolbion.'
In Milk Street, Cheapside, lived Sir John More, judge in the Court of King's Bench; and in Milk street, A.D. 1480, was born Sir John's famous son Thomas, the Chancellor, who was at the same time learned and simple, witty and pious, notable for gentle meekness and firm resolve, abounding with tenderness and hot with courage. Richard Rich—who beyond Scroggs or Jeffreys deserves to be remembered as the arch-scoundrel of the legal profession—was one of Thomas More's playmates and boon companions for several years of their boyhood and youth. Richard's father was an opulent mercer, and one of Sir John's near neighbors; so the youngsters were intimate until Master Dick, exhibiting at an early age his vicious propensities, came to be "esteemed very light of his tongue, a great dicer and gamester, and not of any commendable fame."
On marrying his first wife Sir Thomas More settled in a house in Bucklersbury, the City being the proper quarter for his residence, as he was an under-sheriff of the city of London, in which character he both sat in the Court of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and presided over a separate court on the Thursday of each week. Whilst living in Bucklersbury he had chambers in Lincoln's Inn. On leaving Bucklersbury he took a house in Crosby Place, from which he moved, in 1523, to Chelsea, in which parish he built the house that was eventually pulled down by Sir Hans Sloane in the year 1740.
A generation later, Sir Nicholas Bacon was living in Noble Street, Foster Lane, where he had built the mansion known as Bacon House, in which he resided till, as Lord Keeper, he took possession of York House. Chief Justice Bramston lived, at different parts of his career, in Whitechapel; in Philip Lane, Aldermanbury; and (after his removal from Bosworth Court) in Warwick Lane, Sir John Bramston (the autobiographer) married into a house in Charterhouse Yard, where his father, the Chief Justice, resided with him for a short time.
But from an early date, and especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the more prosperous of the working lawyers either lived within the walls of the Inns, or in houses lying near the law colleges. Fleet Street, the Strand, Holborn, Chancery Lane, and the good streets leading into those thoroughfares, contained a numerous legal population in the times between Elizabeth's death and George III.'s first illness. Rich benchers and Judges wishing for more commodious quarters than they could obtain at any cost within college-walls, erected mansions in the immediate vicinity of their Inns; and their example was followed by less exalted and less opulent members of the bar and judicial bench. The great Lord Strafford first saw the light in Chancery Lane, in the house of his maternal grandfather, who was a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. Lincoln's Inn Fields was principally built for the accommodation of wealthy lawyers; and in Charles II.'s reign Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields was in high repute with legal magnates. Sir Edward Coke lived alternately in chambers, and in Hatton House, Holborn, the palace that came to him by his second marriage. John Kelyng's house stood in Hatton Garden, and there he died in 1671. In his mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Sir Harbottle Grimston, on June 25, 1660 (shortly before his appointment to the Mastership of the Rolls, for which place he is said to have given Clarendon £8000), entertained Charles II. and a grand gathering of noble company. After his marriage Francis North took his high-born bride into chambers, which they inhabited for a short time until a house in Chancery Lane, near Serjeants' Inn, was ready for their use. On Nov. 15, 1666—the year of the fire of London, in which year Hyde had his town house in the Strand—Glyn died in his house, in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields. On June 15, 1691, Henry Pollexfen, Chief Justice of Common Pleas, expired in his mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. These addresses—taken from a list of legal addresses lying before the writer—indicate with sufficient clearness the quarter of the town in which Charles II.'s lawyers mostly resided.
Under Charles II. the population of the Inns was such that barristers wishing to marry could not easily obtain commodious quarters within College-walls. Dugdale observes "that all but the benchers go two to a chamber: a bencher hath only the privilege of a chamber to himself." He adds—"if there be any one chamber consisting of two parts, and the one part exceeds the other in value, and he who hath the best part sells the same, yet the purchaser shall enter into the worst part; for it is a certain rule that the auntient in the chamber—viz., he who was therein first admitted, without respect to their antiquity in the house, hath his choice of either part." This custom of sharing chambers gave rise to the word 'chumming,' an abbreviation of 'chambering.' Barristers in the present time often share a chamber—i.e., set of rooms. In the seventeenth century an utter-barrister found the half of a set of rooms inconveniently narrow quarters for himself and wife. By arranging privately with a non-resident brother of the long robe, he sometimes obtained an entire "chamber," and had the space allotted to a bencher. When he could not make such an arrangement, he usually moved to a house outside the gate, but in the immediate vicinity of his inn, as soon as his lady presented him with children, if not sooner.
Of course working, as well as idle, members of the profession were found in other quarters. Some still lived in the City; others preferred more fashionable districts. Roger North, brother of the Lord Keeper and son of a peer, lived in the Piazza of Covent Garden, in the house formerly occupied Lely the painter. To this house Sir Dudley North moved from his costly and dark mansion in the City, and in it he shortly afterwards died, under the hands of Dr. Radcliffe and the prosperous apothecary, Mr. St. Amand. "He had removed," writes Roger, "from his great house in the City, and came to that in the Piazza which Sir Peter Lely formerly used, and I had lived in alone for divers years. We were so much together, and my incumbrances so small, that so large a house might hold us both." Roger was a practicing barrister and Recorder of Bristol.
During his latter years Sir John Bramston (the autobiographer) kept house in Greek Street, Soho.
In the time of Charles II. the wealthy lawyers often maintained suburban villas, where they enjoyed the air and pastimes of the country. When his wife's health failed, Francis North took a villa for her at Hammersmith, "for the advantage of better air, which he thought beneficial for her;" and whilst his household tarried there, he never slept at his chambers in town, "but always went home to his family, and was seldom an evening without company agreeable to him." In his latter years, Chief Justice Pemberton had a rural mansion in Highgate, where his death occurred on June 10, 1699, in the 74th year of his age. A pleasant chapter might be written on the suburban seats of our great lawyers from the Restoration down to the present time. Lord Mansfield's 'Kenwood' is dear to all who are curious in legal ana. Charles Yorke had a villa at Highgate, where he entertained his political and personal friends. Holland, the architect, built a villa at Dulwich for Lord Thurlow; and in consequence of a quarrel between the Chancellor and the builder, the former took such a dislike to the house, that after its completion he never slept a night in it, though he often passed his holidays in a small lodge standing in the grounds of the villa. "Lord Thurlow," asked a lady of him,