The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-06 00:00:00

THE LAST OF LYON'S INN.

' There remains nothing no‘v but a waste of old bricks, a
half acre of desolation, to mark what once was "Lyon's
Inn I" It was "as old at least as Henry V.," says Pennant.
"It is small and old, and hath a back door into Wych-
th musty ,
street," quoth Stowe, speaking disparagingly of it, as some-
thing
in 1598. "It was an Inn of Chancery in
King Henry V.'s time, as we read in the steward's accompt
books, says Dngdale, in his Ortgines, reverently, as an an-
tiquary speaks of everything ancient, " and how long before
it is uncertain." "It dates from 1420," says Maitland. In
an old picture map of London, supposed to be by Ralph
Aggas, and taken in the early days of Queen Elizabeth,
when the first timber structure of Whitehall Banquetting
House was not yet raised, ere Lamb's Conduit adorned
Holbourne, and enabled the citizens—
" Their steeds to water at those springs
At Holbourne's gate that lies ;"
v
ere the munificent Gresham, with. a prophetic foresight of
hisAn tnwaetrivreescfiatmy'esderoumrseerciinathge Rnoloeys, had reared a rial Exchange of London
—a map, in which are long gardens to all the houses on the
north side of the Strand, with fields behind, between them
and Holbourne, stretching up unbroken to Highgate-hill;
with foot-paths, and love-lanes, and hedges, and high trees,
and cattle pasturing; and in which Drury-lane and the
Strand are two yet rural streets, alike starting fromr 1, emple
Bar, divided at their junction by St. Clement Dane's Church
and an intermediate row of houses on either side beyond it
—we find Lyon's Inn, a small square surrounded by ancient
buildings, with the present three old houses in Holywell-
-street pertaining to it—the first existing, as they will be the
first to be eradicated, in that unsavoury locality.
Lyon's Inn, with Clement's Inn and New Inn, were ap-
purtenances to the Inner Temple, much after the manner
that halls at the universities originally belonged to colleges,
and have dropped from them into independence. When our
Kings presided in courts of law, the judges, of course, tra-
velled about with them, becoming resident for occasional
periods in inns or large houses of temporary resort ; but
when Henry lIL domiciled the law permanently in West-
minster Hall, the lawyers, invited to attend there, finally
fluttered down, and settled in the present Inns of Court and
Chancery. Why the latter name was given is not known,
and, curiously enough, has never been made the subject of
inquiry. All that is known is that Clifford's Inn, Thavie's
Inn, Barnard's Inn, and Staple's Inn, within the walls,
with Clement's Inn, New Inn, and Lyou's Inn, outside
the City, were Inns of Chancery to the Inner Temple.
Why this outer locality was chosen seems evident, for
opposite " Chester's Inn," where the bishop dwelt when
in attendance on the court (it was on the south side of the
Strand, and just beyond Essex House, as you approach
the City from the fields of St. Martin's, or the vil-
lage of Charing?, was the " Cross"or stone, on which,
up to 1204 (the reign of King John) the judges
sat, without the City," to administer justice; " and some-
times they used the bishop's house for the purpose." This
was in 1204, and lawyers were then encouraged by special
Royal invites to resort to London from all parts; but in
1244, these flocks of lawyers, with their law schools, and
their noisy students, became so rank a nuisance, that a pro-
clamation of Henry 111., about that period, enjoins the
sheriffs and mayor to put them down. Of Clifford's Inn we
find a conveyance in 1348 ; of Lyon's Inn a record of 1420 ;
Clement's Inn is mentioned in Edward's IV.'s time; and
" in New Inn," on Pennant's authority, " the students of
the Strand Inn nestled after they were routed out from
thence by the Duke of Somerset," the proud Protector, who
pulled down inn, and college, and hall, and church, to make
room for his palace, and was hardly hindered from destroy-
ing Westminster Abbey itself, at the dissolution of its
monastery, to supply stones for the building of his Somer-
set House,

In Queen Elizabeth's time Lyon's Inn numbered 80
students in term, and thirty out of term, to whom " Read-
ings" and " Mooting& " went on with great regularity.
What went on after those exercises we can infer tolerably
well from Shakspere's report. Hark to " the chimes at mid-
night I " See what a party of "swinge-bucklers" are com-
ing round the corner towards St. Clement's ! Why, as we
live, there's Little John Doit of Staffordshire, and Black
George Barnes of Staffordshire, and Francis Pickbone, and
Will Squele of Cotswold ; ay, and young Squire Shallow,
too, of Gloucestershire—a lean, long, lathy stripling, such a
one as you would carve, after supper, out of a cheese paring;
and with them the merriest and most mischievous of the
party, strapping Jack Falstaff, John o' Gaunt's page I Rare
lads, these. How bravely they ruffle along, with their
watchword, "Hem, boys I" on their way, perchance, from
shooting at the butts with Prince Arthur's archers, or from
the Old Mill at Vauxhall, to young Shallow's chambers in
Clement's Inn.

Shakspere places his Justice Shallow in itenrylV.'s time,
but he had seen such a scene, so he describes, with his own
eyes, in coming home with Ben Jenson from the Devil Ta-
vern, when, " by reason of the frequent disturbance and
unthriftiness of the gentlemen in the Inns of Chancery in
the streets at night, the inhabitants (as old Strype tells us
piteously), were obliged to keep watch; and in 1482 "the
Recorder himself, with six men of the honest inhabitants
(a scene worthy of Rowlandson, and from which, or some-
thing of the kind, Shakspere must have been indebted for
his Dogberry and Verges), stood by St. Clement's Church
to see the lanthorns hung out, and watch for some of these
outrageous dealers." And whom do you think they caught?
Why, " at 7 o'clock at night they saw young Mr. Robert
Cecil (he that was afterwards Queen Elizabeth's secretary),
the Lord Treasurer's son, pass by the church." But Mr.
Robert Cecil, a wise youth, albeit noisy withal, must have
smoked their purpose ; for "he gave them as he passed a
civil salute," which so pleased the six men of the honest
inhabitants of St. Clement's Danes, that they exclaimed,
"See the good youth, he pulleth off his cap 'to poor men.
The Lord bless him I" And so the Recorder wrote next day
to his father, the Lord Treasurer, congratulating him on
the possession of such a treasure in so worthy a son.
Who Lyon was is unknown, if ever there was such a per-
son ; although the arms of the Inn, " upon a °heckle or an
az. a lion salient, and tongued and armed gules," would
seem to point to some distinct family, whose place had been
sold, just as was Clifford's Inn, of whose conveyance to the
Middle Temple by the Clifford family there is existing
record. Of Lyon nothing is left now but the outward sign
of the lion on the hall ; which, albeit, afforded some
amusement on the day of the rubbish sale, from the eager-
ness with which certain Jews in the vicinity bid for the
useless relic—too old for a modern sign, and too new to be
valuable from antiquity, a its date hardly reached 1700.
What could these Jews want with it? What was Lyon's
Inn to them ? That lion was not the lion of Judah. At last
it came out that a waggish bidder had hinted to some six or
seven chosen Hebrews, each separately, that the lion on that
hall was made of lead, and had been painted over, in days
long gone by, to look like stone. The possessors of this
valuable "tip" duly attended the sale—each unconscious
of the others' equal knowledge—and as the effigy was
perched up too high to be reached or handled, the specula-
tion became a dashing one, and the biddings were vivid.
The successful Jewish gentleman who waited throughout
that foggy afternoon to receive his lumbering stone trea-
sure, went home a wiser, but if we were to judge by his
language on the occasion, assuredly not a better man.
Down with that lion came the hall, in later years the scene
of sucking forensic celebrities; for two or three legal debat-
ing clubs held it on hire for their oratorical exercises, thus
unwittingly replacing the ancient " mootings" and read-
ings, over which Sir E. Coke had presided for two years (it
was here he won his spurs and his clients as a great lawyer),
and for refusing to attend which, when chosen by the an-
cients of Lion's inn out of the six outer barristers sent up to
them by the Inner Temple benchers, as reader, no loss a
man than the great John Selden suffered martyrdom, in
1624, by the loss of his "commons" and a fine of £2O. Down
from the walls to the obscurity of the porter's lodge de-
scended the venerable portrait of Sir Edward with the long
pointed beard and ruff, so well known from the engravings ;
and opened to the air were the musty records of the muni-
went chest of the Inn. It contained nothing but many rotten
volumes of " steward's aecompt-books," kept in various old
" law hands;" list of defaulters in rent, items " for a new
spit" and a painter's bill; credits of rental £4OO, for the
whole Inn, and a Flemish account of the manner in which
this sum was expended ; bonds of fellows admitted (to what
privileges no one could tell) ; calculations of £5OO to re-
build the hall (which was done on 27 securities) and £1,400
to repair the Inn (which never was done, as the money
could never be raised) ; records of a tricky suit at law with
the Inner Temple about the rents of the three old houses in
Holywell-street ; a tax-gatherer's receipt, with advertise.
ments at the back of it (there were men of genius in those
days I) ; and last, not least, the will—signed, sealed, and
delivered—of old Sir Josiah Child, goldsmith and banker.
With Selden's refusal to read to its students, died, appa-
rently, the glories of Lyon's Inn; for we hear nothing wore
of its lawyers, and find nothing in its muniments butdias
shlnnpuedwtoas esap,
ceipts for small beer for the "Ancients" and till!, 0.7 bailey,
for the porter, until we land upon a certainwiil
£2,500 to
Esq.," of Lyon's Inn, who leaves in 131 frepe,e mur.
erect that monument to the Earl of Mr
Eh 4•• s")
ray), which the great patriot lawyer
Esq.'s") Posthumous
but which, thanks to "A- *".,_ oi Westminster Abbey.
d_rornofsivtrh.elivia7 Veare, by Thurtell,
thaterora Hook's wickedl '
n Lyon'
aggra-
vatedTheymunificence,
finaltointensity
ignominy n o w a,
by "°1 William y improvised
ballad on the murder
xis brains they batter'd in ;
„They cut his throat from
in Hertfordshire
Anvedrshees,lilvioedonine ear to ear,
at Gills
His name was Mr. William Weare,
tos Inn 1"
le"
his
address
as
Llikyeodn'
After those
Lyon's Inn," so that, gradually deserted by its tenants
it soon wore the appearance of the ancient mansion in the
story. The " Ancients," one after another, died out; it was
worth no one's while to look after rents that never accrued,
or, accruing, never were paid. The steward, it may be
imagined, went out fishing one dismal wet afternoon, and
was heard of no more. The porter was starved out. The
beadles called in vain from the vicine parishes for annual
charity to the poor. The dreary old square and its dirty
tumble-down staircases fell into charge of one miserable
charwoman, who took in washing in the hall, and hung up
wet clothes in the cloisters. There was no corporate body
to rebuild the houses as they decayed into irreparable rot-
tenness. The " feoffees in trust" dwindled down to a feoffee
in possession. There was no one to elect, no one to be
elected—no one to represent, and no one to be represented.

The very man who called, so very perseveringly, for the
water-rate during three years, and always went away so
angrily, oould find no one to threaten with his so terrible
ultimatum. The inn remained a desert and a profitless
blank in the very midst of the great arterial thoroughfare
of London; until, suddenly, the bright idea arose of re-
storing it to its original destination of an hotel for travel-
lers, acquiring a favourable frontage in the Strand by ally-
ing it with the well-known " Sam's Hotel." Lyon's Inn
has, therefore, disappeared ; but a Strand Hotel, with half
an acre of bedchambers behind it, and a Great Hall, to
rival that of Exeter, and with a similar appropriation, will
speedily re-appear on its site, as one of the new architectu-
ral ornaments of the centre of the metropolis.—Observer.