ne of the scenes
of his _King Henry VI._--that, namely, in which the partisans of the
rival houses of York and Lancaster first assume their distinctive badges
of the white and red roses:--

"_Suffolk._ Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;
The garden here is more convenient.

* * * * *

"_Plantagenet._ Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

"_Somerset._ Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

* * * * *

"_Plantagenet._ Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?

"_Somerset._ Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?

* * * * *

"_Warwick._ This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night."

_King Henry VI._, Part I., Act ii., sc. 4.

The books of the Middle Temple do not commence till the reign of King
Henry VII., the first treasurer named in them being John Brooke, in the
sixteenth year of Henry VII. (1500-1). Readers were not appointed till
the following year, the earliest being John Vavasour--probably son of
the judge, and not, as Dugdale calls him, the judge himself, who had
then been on the bench for twelve years. Members of the house might be
excused from living in commons on account of their wives being in town,
or for other special reasons (Foss).

In the last year of Philip and Mary (1558) eight gentlemen of the Temple
were expelled the society and committed to the Fleet for wilful
disobedience to the Bench, but on their humble submission they were
readmitted. A year before this a severe Act of Parliament was passed,
prohibiting Templars wearing beards of more than three weeks' growth,
upon pain of a forty-shilling fine, and double for every week after
monition. The young lawyers were evidently getting too foppish. They
were required to cease wearing Spanish cloaks, swords, bucklers,
rapiers, gowns, hats, or daggers at their girdles. Only knights and
benchers were to display doublets or hose of any light colour, except
scarlet and crimson, or to affect velvet caps, scarf-wings to their