INNS OF COURT 283 



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 dc 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 Hey- 

 gate 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 enu- 

 merated, 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 fur- 

 nished 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 



