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 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 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 
