s not that of God a full fayre grace
That swiche a lewed mannes wit shall face
The wisdom of an hepe of lerned men?

"Of maisters had he more than thries ten,
_That were of law expert and curious_;
Of which there was a dosein in that hous
Worthy to ben stewardes of rent and land
Of any lord that is in Engleland:
To maken him live by his propre good,
In honour detteles; but if he were wood,
Or live as scarsly as him list desire,
And able for to helpen all a shire,
In any cos that mighte fallen or happe:
And yet this manciple sett 'hir aller cappe.'"

In the Middle Temple Chaucer is supposed to have formed the
acquaintanceship of his graver contemporary, "the moral Gower."

[Illustration: TOMBS OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS (_see page 152_).]

Many of the old retainers of the Templars became servants of the new
lawyers, who had ousted their masters. The attendants at table were
still called paniers, as they had formerly been. The dining in pairs,
the expulsion from hall for misconduct, and the locking out of chambers
were old customs also kept up. The judges of Common Pleas retained the
title of knight, and the Fratres Servientes of the Templars arose again
in the character of learned serjeants-at-law, the coif of the modern
serjeant being the linen coif of the old Freres Serjens of the Temple.
The coif was never, as some suppose, intended to hide the tonsure of
priests practising law contrary to ecclesiastical prohibition. The old
ceremony of creating serjeants-at-law exactly resembles that once used
for receiving Fratres Servientes into the fraternity of the Temple.

In Wat Tyler's rebellion the wild men of Kent poured down on the dens of
the Temple lawyers, pulled down their houses, carried off the books,
deeds, and rolls of remembrance, and burnt them in Fleet Street, to
spite the Knights Hospitallers. Walsingham, the chronicler, indeed, says
that the rebels--who, by the by, claimed only their rights--had resolved
to decapitate all the lawyers of London, to put an end to all the laws
that had oppressed them, and to clear the ground for better times. In
the reign of Henry VI. the overgrown society of the Temple divided into
two halls, or rather the original two halls of the knights and Fratres
Servientes separated into two societies. Brooke, the Elizabethan
antiquary, says: "To this day, in memory of the old custom, the benchers
or ancients of the one society dine once