Holborn: Gray's Inn: Eminent Members

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W. J. Loftie, adding to the incomplete work of Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holborn with this look at Gray's Inn members:

The gardens open by a handsome gate of wrought iron into Field Court, which is westward of Gray's Inn Square.

Here Bacon planted the trees, and enjoyed the view northward, then all open, from a summer-house which was only removed about 1754.

Bacon lived in Coney Court, destroyed by fire in 1678, which looked on the garden.

Among the names of eminent men which occur to the memory in Gray's Inn, we must mention a tradition which makes Chief Justice Gascoigne a student here.

More real is Thomas Cromwell, the terrible Vicar-General of Henry VIII.

Sir Thomas Gresham was a member of the Inn, as was his contemporary Camden, the antiquary.

Lord Burghley and his second son, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, were both members, it is said, but certainly Burghley.

The list of casual inhabitants is almost inexhaustible, being swelled by the heroes of many novels, actually or entirely fictitious.

Shakespeare was said to have played in the hall. Bradshaw, who presided at the trial of Charles I, was a bencher; and so was Holt, the Chief Justice of William III.

More eminent than either, perhaps, was Sir Samuel Romilly, whose sad death in 1818 caused universal regret.

Pepys mentions the walks, and observed the fashionable beauties after church one Sunday in May, 1662.

Sir Roger de Coverley is placed on the terrace by Addison, and both Dryden, Shadwell, and other old dramatists speak of the gardens.

It was at Gray's Inn Gate - the old gate into Portpool Lane - that Jacob Tonson, the great bookseller and publisher of the eighteenth century, had his shop

Next: Holborn: Bedford Row