Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/86

 Gray's Inn. GRAY'S INN. BY DENNIS W. DOUTHWAITE. DURING the five centuries of its existence Inns of Court. Now and again some writer as an Inn of Court, Gray's Inn has whose zeal on behalf of his Inn outran his contrived to gather no small store of local love of strict accuracy has proved to his own history. The gates which guard it on all satisfaction the priority of one or other of sides from the city life without have done them. But the jealous eye of a sister has more than preserve its quietude and repose. always found a flaw in the pedigree; and the They have kept within them customs cen Inns are to-day, as they were in the time of turies old, while outside every year brought Elizabeth, "the four equal and honourable its change of fashion. The step from Hoi- Societies of the Inns of Court."

born under the old Much the same gateway (where doubt exists as to once stood the shop the exact date at of Jacob Tonson, which the various Pope's publisher), buildings were takes us at once erected. Dugdale into a world full of tells us that in 1551 quaint habit and the old " Hall was ancient custom. seiled with fiftyHere the sixteenth four yards of wainscentury treads hard coat at 2s. a yard;" on the heels of the and in 1556 every fellow of the House nineteenth, and in many ways still was mulcted ac holds its pride of cording to his place. standing to pay for Gray's Inn was the cost of its resoriginally the man toration. Mr. SOUTH SQUARE. or of the Greys of Douthwaite,1 the Wilton, from whom modern chronicler it takes its name. The exact date of its of the Inn, puts the building of the hall in foundation as an Inn of Court is not known. the reign of Mary; and certainly it could be But we can at once step back to 1311, at no later than this. which time the Inn can boast of a Bencher It is a handsome building, the interior — one Ralphe Andrew — whose pedigree is richly panelled, and with a finely carved preserved in the Harleian Manuscript. This screen at one end said to be the gift of Queen brings the foundation back to at most 1300, Elizabeth to the Society. Above this is a for even in those days it took time to make gallery from which the same Queen witnessed many of the Masques performed in Hall a Bencher. Having achieved such a respec table antiquity, and having satisfied ourselves during her reign. But its chief interest as a that no other Inn can establish a longer shrine for the literary pilgrim lies in the fact that it is one of the two buildings now re pedigree, we can afford to rest content. It is worth noticing that the same doubt 1 Gray's Inn : its History and Associations. London : hangs over the date of foundation of all four Reeves & Turner, 1886i 9