hosts;
Or wait for customers between
The pillar rows in Lincoln's Inn."

In James I.'s time the Round, as we find in Ben Jonson, was a place for
appointments; and in 1681 Otway describes bullies of Alsatia, with
flapping hats pinned up on one side, sandy, weather-beaten periwigs, and
clumsy iron swords clattering at their heels, as conspicuous personages
among the Knights of the Posts and the other peripatetic philosophers of
the Temple walks.

We must now turn to the history of the whole precinct. When the proud
Order was abolished by the Pope, Edward II. granted the Temple to Aymer
de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who, however, soon surrendered it to the
king's cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, who let it, at their special
request, to the students and professors of the common laws; the colony
then gradually becoming an organised and collegiate body, Edward I.
having authorised laymen for the first time to read and plead causes.

Hugh le Despenser for a time held the Temple, and on his execution
Edward III. appointed the Mayor of London its guardian. The mayor
closing the watergate caused much vexation to the lawyers rowing by boat
to Westminster, and the king had to interfere. In 1333 the king farmed
out the Temple rents at L25 a year. In the meantime, the Knights
Hospitallers, affecting to be offended at the desecration of holy
ground--the Bishop of Ely's lodgings, a chapel dedicated to a Becket,
and the door to the Temple Hall--claimed the forfeited spot. The king
granted their request, the annual revenue of the Temple then being L73
6s. 11d., equal to about L1,000 of our present money. In 1340, in
consideration of L100 towards an expedition to France, the warlike king
made over the residue of the Temple to the Hospitallers, who instantly
endowed the church with lands and one thousand fagots a year from
Lillerton Wood to keep up the church fires.

In this reign Chaucer, who is supposed to have been a student of the
Middle Temple, and who is said to have once beaten an insolent
Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, gives a eulogistic sketch of a Temple
manciple, or purveyor of provisions, in the prologue to his wonderful
"Canterbury Tales."

"A gentil manciple was there of the Temple
Of whom achatours mighten take ensample,
For to ben wise in bying of vitaille;
For, whether that he paid or toke by taille,
Algate he waited so in his achate
That he was aye before in good estate.
Now i