Staple Inn: Customs house, Wool court, and Inn of chancery; its mediæval surroundings and associations

Preface

THE greater part of this book is made up of matter which has now been brought together for the first time. No attempt has been made to go over ground already well covered by Foss, by Day, and by Cato Worsfold. My object has been rather to throw fuller light on the origin of Staple Inn and to supply fresh facts and suggestions as to its history.

I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Directors of the Prudential Assurance Company for allowing me access to all their muniments relating to this subject, and for their gracious permission to dedicate this work to them; also to the Benchers of Gray's Inn for the use of extracts from their Pension Book. Nor can I omit to mention the great kindness of Mr. H. A. Harben of the London County Council, who, though a very busy man, has looked through my MS. before its committal to print, and has assisted me not a little with his knowledge of antiquarian London and his excellent judgment and advice.

My indebtedness to my literary forerunners is acknowledged in the course of the volume which, it is needless to say, could not have been compiled but for their previous labours. In addition, my thanks are due to Mr. I. Burrows for his assistance in producing the map, and for his photographs of the Inn which have enabled Miss Scott to produce her illustrations ; and, finally, I must acknowledge my debt to Mr. Paul Waterhouse for the drawings [of the roof of the Hall which he so courteously supplied.

Contents

I. Introductory ....... 1 in. Staple Inn as a ' Seld ' and Custom House ... 9

iv. Staple Inn as a Pie-powder Court . . . .14

v. The Surroundings of Staple Inn in the Reign of Edward in. . 18 vi. Castle Street and the old Temple . . . .25

Appendix

A. The Late Mr. Waterhouse and Staple Inn ... 149

B. List of Principals of Staple Inn ..... 151

C. The Heraldry in the Windows of Staple Inn . . 152

D. Examples of Admissions to and Surrenders of Chambers . 160

E. List of Admissions from 1716 . . . . .166

F. Staple Inn Young Mess, by Isaac Reed . . . .185

G. List of Members in 1585, .190

ILLUSTRATIONS

Staple Inn Frontage to Holborn.— Frontispiece.

PAGE

Detail from Wainscoting in the Hall . 2

Staple Hall ........ 3

Merchant's Mark from a Window in the Hall . . . .12

Map of the Surroundings of Staple Inn in A. D. 1313 . . . 20

The Old Pump and Exit to Holborn ..... 30

Offices of the Prudential Assurance Company . . . .34

The Exchequer Board ....... 58

The Woolsack ........ 62

Interior of the Hall . ..... 104

The Louvre of the Hall . ..... 109

Plan of the Roof of the Hall . . . . . .118

Arms of Richard Champion . . . . . .119

High Holborn, Nos. 337 and 338 ..... 123

Entrance to the Hall from the Garden . . . . .129

Panel from a Window in the Hall . . . . .131

Staple Inn Garden . . . . . . .132

Staple Inn, No. 3 . . . . . 139

Chapter I Introductory

THE block of quaint old buildings situate at Holborn Bars, which so often, at first view, excites in the casual visitor a feeling of pleasurable interest and surprise, is not of any very great age in comparison with masterpieces of inspired stonework such as some of the English mediaeval cathedrals. Probably no part of it is more than three hundred and fifty years old. But as a typical example of Elizabethan domestic architecture it stands without a rival in the whole of London. And as such it forms a unique monument of a most fascinating period in the history of the English people.

These buildings do seem old, however, when we come to reflect that the present hoary-looking frontage and also the Hall of the Inn were built nearly thirty years before the London Virginia Company planted, in 1607, the first colony of Englishmen on the North American continent, that is, thirty years before even a beginning was made of those small settlements, the phenomenal development of which has culminated in the present United States. This fact serves to emphasise not only the length of years but also the important transformations which these relics of the past have witnessed and withstood.

The Hall of the Inn was being built in 1580 and the embellishment of its interior was being completed in 1592. Eobert Willett, one of the lessees of a large part of the Inn, bequeathed in the latter year to 'the Principall and Graunde Companye of Staple Inne towards the finishing of the Seeling (wainscoting) and trymming (decoration) of the haule of the said Inne the somme of fyve pounds of moneye to be paid to them by my executors within two rnonethes next after the same Hall shall begonne to be seeled and trymmed.' l

In 1584, at his own expense, Eobert Willett, a Grandfellow of the Inn, had already to a large extent 'wainscotted the new builded hall,' and in consideration thereof had been permitted to rebuild a part of the Inn ; and ' at the special instance and request

of the Principal and Gentlemen of Staple Inne, an Inne of Chancery, appendant and belonging to Gray's Inn' had received from 'the Eight Worshippful the Readers of Gray's Inn ' a lease of the said premises for sixty years.2 These premises were taken down in the early S.L.S. part of the eighteenth

century; but other premises leased to Vincent Engham by the Society

of Staple Inn in consideration of his having rebuilt the same in 1586, which were assigned by Engham to Willett, still in part remain. This portion of the Inn is that part of the frontage lying west of the Bars and known as 337 and 338 High Holborn. The other part of the frontage is of a very similar character, and we may conclude that it too was rebuilt at about the same period, at all events not much before 1570.

That these buildings must have been regarded when they were built as good specimens of their class is tolerably certain. For Sir George Buck, writing in 1615, says it is 'much to the praise and commendation of the gentlemen of this house that they have bestowed great costs in new building a fair Hall of brick and two

DETAIL FROM THE WAINSCOTING OF STAPLE HALL.

1 Wills proved P. C. C., 1592. Robert Willett, 16 Nevell.

2 Record Office, Chancery Proceedings, Elizabeth, N. 2, 58.

J.L.S.

STAPLE HALL — BUILT BY RICHARD CHAMPION IN A.D. 1581.

parts of the outer Courtyards besides other lodging in the garden and elsewhere and have thereby made it the fayrest Inne of Chancery in this University.' 1

The 'two parts of the outer courtyards' referred to were undoubtedly the blocks facing the north and west. That towards the north abutting on Holborn Bars, that is, the frontage, still exists -, but after the great fire of London in 1666 it became the custom, in order to lessen the spreading of any conflagration in the future, to cover with plaster all exterior woodwork in the building of houses, and this part of the Inn was disfigured in this manner and its windows set back to the same upright plane as the walls for two hundred and twenty years. But even in this condition Staple Inn was described in the year 1720 by Strype as 'a very handsome, open arid well-built place.' In 1887, however, the plaster was scraped off, the woodwork exposed, and the windows restored to their original position by the present proprietors of the Inn, who utilised for the purposes of restoration the services of their distinguished architect the late Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, E-.A. ; so that we now see it much the same, barring its greater age and the modernised shops, as it must have appeared to Sir George Buck in the reign of James I., when he described it as 'the fayrest Inne of Chancery.'

It is certain, however, that these structures were rebuilt upon much more ancient foundations, and that Staple Inn existed as an Inn and was known by that name nearly six hundred years ago. It will be shown in these pages how it was that it received that name. And inasmuch as its ancient history and the concurrent purposes for which it was used cannot be understood without some account of its early surroundings, an attempt will be made to regain some idea of what those surroundings were in Norman and Plantagenet times ; for in no other way can the importance and interest of this earliest Inn of Chancery be conveyed.

1 The Third University, etc. Geo. Buck, 1615, in Stow's Annales.

Chapter II The Name

ALTHOUGH for centuries this Inn was known as an Inn for Chancery Students, it was not as an Inn of Chancery that it received its name. Staple Inn means, in the language of the Middle Ages, a customs-house, and in particular a customs-house for wool.

Etymologically, however, the word staple has nothing to do with taxable commodities or with wool. It signifies a rest, a heap, or a stack. In a charter of the Saxon King, Edgar, dated 969, we are told that ' the king stood upon the stapole.1 "We may imagine that the stapole would be a low rest or stand for goods to keep them off the ground. Sometimes the Saxon word stapol, stapel, or stapul, or its Danish equivalent, stable, denoted simply a pillar or stone set up as a mark. It is supposed that Whitstable took its name in this way, from a white pillar or stone erected as a guide to ships entering the harbour. And it is not unlikely that in the days when town and mart were synonymous, a staple was a pillar set up to indicate the place where a Fair with its collection of booths might be held, and in that respect it was the predecessor of the cross with which in later times the market was hallowed.

But the word came eventually to be applied to a stack of goods or a store of merchandise, and also the place or ground where the goods were exposed for sale. In another charter of King Edgar, dated 967, we are told that a certain boundary went 'from the burial ground on to the stapol ; from the stapole on to clear-ford ' ; and in this connection the word seems to indicate a market.1

1 Land Charters and other Saxon Documents, pp. 466-467 : John Earle, 1888. Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary : T. N. Toller, 1882. Codex Diplomaticus : Kemble.

Such personal names as Staple and Stable can also be shown to have had a likely origin in the staple ; as for instance Adam del Stable, also called Adam Staple, who was M.P. for the City in 1373 and Mayor in 1377, and was a wool merchant. Underconstables were always associated with markets ; and every Wool Staple of Plantagenet times had a Mayor and two Constables.

The French in Plantagenet times used the word estaple both for a mart and marketable goods, and also for the public storehouse within which merchant strangers lodged their commodities which they meant to sell ; 1 dtape, its modern derivative, has the meaning of store-house in English. The word halle, also, which in the Middle Ages was the Anglo-French equivalent for the Saxon inn, which then signified any tenement embracing an enclosure, means to-day, in modern French, a market or market-house.

Le stapled halle, therefore, in the reign of Edward ill. would, no doubt, have the same meaning as the Dutch stapel-huys, that is, a staple-house or warehouse where commodities chargeable with export duties might be examined and taxed. And Staple Inn, in the year 1333, was known by the name of ' le stapled halle,' being associated, no doubt, with the ideas both of a customs-house and of a pie-powder court of justice.

On the 25th January 1330, the will of John le Brun was proved in the Court of Hustings. He bequeathed his tenement in the parish of Berkyngecherche, called 'la Stapeldehalle,' to his wife Amicia. And three years later at the same Court the will of Richard Starcolf, mercer, was proved, who bequeathed his tenement called 'le Stapled halle' within the Bar, in the parish of St. Andrew de Holeburne, to be sold for pious uses ; and to his son Thomas, in tail, all his tenements and arable lands without the Bar in the parish of St. Giles of the Lepers. It was dated Holeburne, Friday, the morrow of the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, 23rd July 1333.2

Here we have records of two holies at opposite extremities of the Liberty of the City of London : one near the Tower, in the

1 English Etymology. H. Wedgwood, 4th Ed., 1888.

2 Court of Hustings Wills, pp. 363, 394. R. R. Sharpe.

THE NAME 7

parish of All Hallows, Barking, which no doubt stood on the wharf of the dock which existed there; the other at Holborn Bars. The former would have occupied a site near the present Customs House ; the latter, still perpetuated in Staple Inn, proves the survival of its name for at least five hundred and seventy-two years. It received that name, as we shall see, in 1313.

Another stapledehalle existed for a time at St. Botolph's, without Bishopsgate, where we might suppose one would have existed, namely, at the entrance to the city by the great eastern Roman road, known as Ermyn Street; but in 1330 it was leased to a fishmonger, and in 1346 to another of the same trade.

On the 4th August 1330, a lease was granted by Friar William de Banham, procurator general of the Order of Bethlehem, to Eichard de Swanlond, fishmonger, of a house called ( la Stapeledehalle,' with shop, etc., adjoining, in the parish of St. Botolph without Bishopesgate, situate near the tenement of John Geryn and John Brid : to hold the same for a term of twelve years from Michaelmas 1330, paying to the nuns of St. Helen's in London the sum of three shillings.1

By the year 1346 this lease had duly expired, for on the 15th August of that year the Master and Brethren of the order of the Knights of St. Mary of Bethlehem made an agreement with Eobert Haunsard (a fishmonger) and Thomas Gentil, junior, touching a certain chamber with solar and cellar within the close of the moat (mote) of the said house, which the said Robert and Thomas are to enjoy with certain limitations, and subject to certain payments, including an annual sum of three shillings to the prioress and nuns of St. Elena for the hall called 'la Stapeledehall.'2

It has been suggested by an authority in these matters that it is not impossible that k stapled halle bore the meaning of the pillared halle, that is, a halle supported upon pillars, similar perhaps to the market halles even now frequently to be met with in old towns in Normandy.

1 Letter Books of the City of London, E., p. 251. R. R. Sharpe.

2 Ibid.

But the three stapled holies above mentioned were situated, it will be noticed, at the great trade gates, so to speak, of the ancient city, a circumstance which seems to suggest that they were placed there for particular uses.

In a letter, dated 10th March 1623, from Emanuel Downing to John Coke, Esq., then one of the Masters of Requests under James I., but Secretary of State in 1625, at a time when the question of monopolies was being much debated, the following sentences occur : * The Merchants pleading antiquity caused me to send to your Worship the order of their institution. The Company of the Staplers began about four hundred years past, tempore Ed, 3. The main cause of their first institution was to see the custom duly paid.'1

Evidently Emanuel Downing was not always successful in subtracting correctly; four hundred years before 1623 takes us back to one hundred years earlier than tempore Ed. 3 ; but we may suppose that he had seen the order in question, and rightly drawn a conclusion as to their origin, to see the custom duly paid.

1 Hist. MSS. Commission Twelfth Report, Part i. vol. i. p. 60.

Chapter III Staple Inn As A ' Seld ' And Custom House

THE exact spot of John Brown's halle cannot be identified, but the position of the house which succeeded it is set forth in Letters Patent of Eichard n. to John le Chircheman, mercer and sheriff of London, dated 24th September 1386, granting that 'as he has at great expense newly erected a house upon the quay called Wollewharf in the Tower ward in the parish of All Hallows, Berkyngecherche, London, between Paul Salesbury's quay on the east and the lane called Watergate on the west, for the service of the king's petty custom in the port of London and his customs officers, controllers and clerks, the said customs shall be collected and kept there during the said John's life, as much being yearly paid to him for the said easement as for other houses similarly used heretofore.' Over the computatorium, that is, the counting and weigh-house, he erected, we are told, a sollar or upper floor '38 feet long by 21 \ feet broad, containing two chambers and a garrett as a further easement for the customs officers, controllers and clerks.' It is also stated that this house was for the tronage of wools. And it may be interesting to know that on 8th May 1382, a grant was made during the king's pleasure to Geoffrey Chaucer, who was then Clerk of the Works at Westminster Abbey, of the office of controller of the said custom 'with the accustomed fees and the cocket seal, he to execute the office in person or by a sufficient deputy.'1

In 1518, Christopher Rawson, mercer and merchant of the Staple at Calais, whose will was proved in the Court of Hustings, bequeathed his wharfs and houses called the ' Old Wolle Kay ' in

1 Calendar of Patent Rolls : Richard n.

the parish of All Hallows, Barking, in trust for John, Thomas, and Eichard, his sons.

Eichard Starcolf of Holborn Bars, originally a Norfolk man,1 who was buried under a handsome tomb in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, was also a mercer, that is one who, in the times of Edward ill., would have dealt in wools and woollen goods. The chronicler, Froissart, who wrote about fifty years after Starcolf 's death, refers in his great work to 'clothe, furres, and other mercery.' The Company of Mercers was already in existence in the year 1214, their earliest known master being Eichard Searle, generally known as Serlo le Mercer, who in the same year became Mayor of London, a post which he again held with considerable distinction for another six years, from 1217 to 122 2.

The land upon which Starcolfs tenement was built would probably have been held on lease, and the tenement itself would probably have been of the same character as a ' seld ' ; that is, it was a large roomy warehouse let in apartments to merchants for the storage of goods to be sold in the market of Portepol, the Bishop of Ely's Fair. But it might also have been partly occupied by ' apprentices of the law/ and have been used as an occasional court of justice.

Many of the selds in the City enclosed vacant patches of ground which might be let separately. The ' larga selda,' or great seld of Lady Eoisia de Coventre, which was situate in the c Mercery ' of Chepe, contained such * a place of ground,' which was let in 1318 for twenty shillings a year;2 and Leden-halle, which at this period was owned by Sir John de Nevyll and was used as a poultry market, contained not only a garden but a court (curia) which was paved. ' Le Spicery ' in the Chepe was another important seld. So was 'le Tanere-selde,' in the parish of St. Mary le Bow, which in 1340 belonged to John le Usscher, a tanner, and was used exclusively by citizens of his trade. The same John Usher also owned a brewhouse in Secollane, that is,

1 History of Norfolk, vol. ii. pp. 463, 492. F. Blomefield, 1805.

2 Memorials of London, p. 134. H. T. Riley, 1868. Gal. Corp. Letter- Books, E., p. 119.

AS A 'SELD' AND CUSTOM HOUSE 11

Seacoal Lane, which then led from Fleet Wharf; another brewhouse in Holeburne Strete called ' ye Leden-pentitz ' ; and some houses and shops, occupied by fellow-tradesmen, in Wenagaynlane, that is Wind-again or Turn-again Lane, ' upon Holeburne-streame in the parish of St. Sepulchre.'1 It should here be pointed out, in case of misconception, that Leden-halle and Leden-pentitz had nothing to do with a lead market ; leden means tenements, halle is an inn, and pentiz is Anglo-French for a shed or pent-house.2 But in 1463, as we shall finally see, Leadenhall did succeed 'le stapled halle' as the market of the wool-staplers, after they had experienced an intermediate and troublous existence at St, Stephen's, Westminster, 'to have the laying up, placing, and housing of wools,' and the fees and profits connected therewith, and ' to have the same' as the charter says 'without rendering anything to the king.'

We may imagine therefore that six hundred years ago Staple Inn was a collection of tenements inclosing ' a place of ground ' as it does to-day.

We may also conclude that here the custom was levied upon goods coming from the west, and that here they were weighed and troned. In a charter of Henry in. to the citizens of London, dated 12th March 1268, he grants 'that no merchant or other do meet any merchants coming by land or water with their merchandises or victuals towards the city to buy and sell again till they come to the said city and there have put the same to sale upon forfeiture of the things bought and pain of imprisonment ; from whence he shall not escape without great punishment. And that none may show out their wares to sell who owe any custom until the custom thereof le levied without great punishment and upon pain or forfeiture of all that commodity of him that happens to do otherwise. And that no merchant stranger or other may buy or sell any wares which ought to be weighed or troned unless by our beams or trone upon forfeiture of the said wares.' 3

2 The ' Times ' Century Dictionary.

3 Historical Charters of the City of London. W. De Gray Birch, 1887.

The trone was a post, generally of wood, supporting a horizontal beam from which scales were hung for the weighing of wool and other articles.

In his Survey of London John Stow mentions the { common beam for weighing of wool and other wares ' in use in Leadenhall in his youth, and tells us, in describing the halle, that ' the remnant of the sides and quadrants was employed for the storage of wool sacks, but not closed up ' ; ' the residue of the lofts were letten

MERCHANT'S MARK, FROM A WINDOW IN STAPLE HALL.

out to merchants, the woolwinders and packers therein, to wind and pack their wools.' 1

This picture of Leadenhall, customs-house and wool-house in Henry vm.'s reign, may be equally true of le stapled halle at Holborn Bars at the time of Starcolf's death in 1333, in the reign of Edward ill.

Gerard Malyns, referring to the merchants of the Staple in his book on the law-merchant, says : ' The places of residence of these merchants, both within the land and beyond the seas, were called Staples. The laws and ordinances made by the said merchants were called staple-laws. Under their government, consisting of a

1 Survey of London. John Stow. P. 60, ed. 1603, reprinted 1876.

AS A <SELD' AND CUSTOM HOUSE 13

Mayor, two Constables, and other officers, hath the trade of this kingdom time out of mind flourished to the great enriching of the kings and kingdom.'

From this extract we may learn that it was the places where the commodities were sold that were originally known as staples, not the commodities themselves. To-day, we say, cotton is the staple of Manchester, but in those days we should have said, Manchester is the staple, that is, the market, for cotton.

* At these Staples,' continues Malyns, ' were the king's customs duly collected and by the officers of the Staple at two several times (in the year) paid into the Exchequer.'1

1 The Ancient Law- Merchant, part in. chap, xx., pub. 1662.

CHAPTEE IV

STAPLE INN AS A PIE-POWDER COURT

THE Court of Hustings was a court held in a house to distinguish it from one held in the open air, which latter came to be known as a court of pie-powder. The word pie-powder was a corruption of the French pied-poudre, foot-dust ; hence it meant a court held on the dusty ground, an idiom of even greater lucidity than the expression 'open air.' The Saxon king, Edgar, in days when monarchs carried their courts with them on their itineraries, may often have sat in a foot-dust stapol or market and adjudicated upon civil and criminal causes.

Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Rechtsalterthumer (804) quotes in three places from the Lex Ripuaria ' regis staplus (stapfolus) ' as a place of judgment. In one passage the words run — 'ad regis staplum, vel ad eum locum ubi mallus est.' John Earle, commenting on this passage, says : ' In the sense of judgment-seat, seat of judicature, we see the stapol still surviving in the elevated seats of the judges in the law Courts.' 1

We may well imagine that as the Hustings might be held in any house, there being none at first specially set apart for that purpose, ' le stapled halle ' at Holborn Bars was, in a later age than Edgar's, a temporary or occasional court which witnessed not only the record of many a mercantile bargain and its attendant taxes, but also the juridical settlement of many a mercantile dispute. Evidence exists that Leden-halle was sometimes used as a court of justice, because about this very period, in 1302,

1 Land Charters and other Saxon Documents, p. 467. J. Earle, 1888. See also Maigne D'Arnis and Du Cange for meaning of ' mallus ' = Public assembly in the days of the old Franks ; tribunal, court of justice, marketplace.

AS A PIE-POWDER COURT 15

thirty years before Starcolfs death, we have a record of an interesting criminal cause which was tried there, in which a certain John le Chaucer (John the shoemaker), supposed to be the father of Richard Chaucer, grandfather of Geoffrey Chaucer, was complainant in a case of assault. ' 1

The following charter of Henry in., dated 26th March 1268, may perhaps throw clearer light upon the particular purposes of a pie-powder court in those days : — * HENRY, by the grace of God, King of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Aquitaine; to his faithful archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, sheriffs, justices, rulers, ministers and all bailiffs and his faithful subjects greeting: KNOW ye that we have granted to our citizens of London . . . that none of them shall be compelled to plead out of the walls of the said city for anything except foreign tenures [that is, tenures outside the walls] and except our moneyers and officers, and except those things which shall be done against our peace, which according to the common law of the realm are wont to be determined in those parts where those trespasses were done, and except pleas concerning merchandises which are wont to le determined according to the law merchant in boroughs and fairs. . . .' This obviously means that market-houses and market-places were used as occasional courts of law.

The Saxon kings and their successors had their markets all over England. But in the vicinity of their particular demesnes, whether in the cities or without, so had the Bishops of the Church : hence at Portepol (Holborn Bars) we get the Bishop of Ely's Fair ; so had the Abbots and Abbesses of the Monasteries and Nunneries : hence we get Stapleford- Abbots, Co. Essex ; so had the territorial lords : hence we get Staple-Fitzpaine, Co. Dorset ; so had the towns : hence we get Staplegate, Canterbury. In a charter of Henry I., undated, but probably of the year 1101, he says that he has granted to his citizens of London that 'all the men of London shall be quit and free, and all their goods, throughout all England, of and from all toll and passage, and lastage and all other customs ; and the Churches and Barons and 1 Liber de Antiquis Legibus, fol. 61. Guildhall Library.

citizens shall and may peaceably and quietly have and hold their soJces [that is, liberty of jurisdiction over the court held within their demesnes] with all their customs ; so that strangers that shall be lodged in the soJces shall give custom to none but to him to whom the soJce appertains or his officer whom he shall put there.' This officer was in Saxon times called the Soke-reeve ; just as he whom we now call the Lord Mayor was known as the Porte-reeve, and the Sheriff was the Shire-reeve. Even the soke-reeve would have power, subject to his lord's confirmation, to inflict the death penalty upon any of his lord's villeins, that is, upon men who were not what was called law worthy.' l