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columns, we look into the later church of 1240; these two churches, built only at a distance of fifty-five years from each other, forming one of the most interesting examples we possess of the transition from Norman to Early English architecture. The Round Church is surrounded by an arcade of narrow Early English arches, separated by a series of heads, which are chiefly restorations. On the pavement lie two groups of restored effigies of "associates" of the Temple (not Knights Templars), carved in freestone, being probably the "eight images of armed knights" mentioned by Stow in 1598.... Against the wall, behind the Marshalls, is the effigy of Robert Ros, Governor of Carlisle in the reign of John. He was one of the great Magna Charta barons, and married the daughter of a king of Scotland, but he was not a Templar, for he wears flowing hair, which is forbidden by the rites of the Order; at the close of his life, however, he took the Templars' habit as an associate, and was buried here in 1227. On the opposite side is a Purbeck marble sarcophagus, said to be that of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, but her effigy is at Fontevrault, where the monastic annals prove that she took the veil after the murder of Prince Arthur. Henry II. left five hundred marks by his will for his burial in the Temple Church, but was also buried at Fontevrault. Gough considers that the tomb here may be that of William Plantagenet, fifth son of Henry III., who died in infancy, and (according to Weaver) was buried in the Temple in 1256. A staircase in the walls leads to the triforium of the Round Church, which is now filled with the tombs, foolishly removed from the chancel beneath. Worthy of especial notice is the colored kneeling effigy of Martin, Recorder of London, and Reader of the Middle Temple, 1615. Near this is the effigy--also colored and under a canopy--of Edmund Plowden, the famous jurist, of whom Lord Ellenborough said that "better authority could not be cited"; and referring to whom Fuller quaintly remarks: "How excellent a medley is made, when honesty and ability meet in a man of his profession!" There is also a monument to James Howell (1594-1666), whose entertaining letters, chiefly written from the Fleet, give many curious particulars relating to the reigns of James I. and Charles I.... The church (eight-two feet long, fifty-eight wide, thirty-seven high), begun in 1185 and finished in 1240, is one of our most beautiful existing speci
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