THE TEMPLE CHURCH DEMI-FIGURES
Thousands of people walk down Inner Temple Lane past the magnificent west doorway of Temple Church. It is doubtful whether many of them notice the eight small carved demi-figures on plinths between the capitals supporting the arch. The capitals themselves were replaced in the 1840s, but the old figures were retained. They have sustained considerable damage from erosion by smog, the application of chemical reagents, the devastating air raid of 1941, and not least – but to an undetermined extent – the restoration work of the 1840s. The best photographic images we have were taken by Bedford Lemere in 1912, the negative of which is in the National Buildings Record (part of the Historic England archive). This year some laser scans were made of what remains today, and these show more detail of the present figures than is apparent to the naked eye. More informative is the drawing of the entrance by John Thomas Smith (1810, published in 1811), which seems more accurate than the sketches by Frederick Nash in the Society of Antiquaries (engraved by Basire in 1818), but both are helpful in showing that any subsequent restorations followed the original details. With the assistance of all these images, it is time to reassess what they represent.
Several of the figures seem to have their mouths slightly open – enough to be speaking.
They have received very little attention in print. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for July 1783 one ‘Ruben d’Moundt’ – an anagram of Edmund Burton – opined that they represented (on the north side) King Henry II and three knights Templar, and (on the south side) the Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem (who consecrated the church in 1185), two priests, and (facing the king) Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Interestingly, he said ‘it would be almost a proof of deficiency in sight to say that they have been impaired by time’. On their condition Burton may have been misled, since it was found in the 1840s that much of the crumbling decoration was held in place by coats of plaster and paint. But on the identification of the figures he could hardly have been more wrong. It was a conjecture based on the automatic assumption that the figures were coeval with the Round; but he failed to take advantage of his good eyesight to look carefully at the sculptures and reflect on their appearance. Burton’s suggestions were repeated without criticism in Hugh Bellot’s The Temple (1927). William Burge in 1843 distilled them down to a king or queen (presumably on each side) and half a dozen ‘monks’. In 1975, the late Professor George Zarnecki (d. 2008), a distinguished expert on Romanesque art, having noted some anachronistic features such as buttons and the absence of beards, and the lack of any parallels on similar 12th century doorways, likewise accepted that the ‘busts’ were part of the original conception. He thought the figures could not include Heraclius because he did not come to England until the Round was completed, and that they were not Templars because they did not wear crosses; but he mentioned a new ‘interesting possibility’ that they might be Saracens.
It is a little audacious for a legal historian to challenge an eminent art historian who became deputy director of the Courtauld Institute. But it seems clear that the demi-figures – they are not merely busts – cannot be from the 12th or even the 13th century. The style of carving and dress belongs more to the middle or second half of the 14th century. A second observation is that several of the figures seem to have their mouths slightly open – not wide enough to be singing, but enough to be speaking – and a number of them hold scrolls. Thirdly, and most importantly, they are not saints or patriarchs, tonsured clerics or monks, and certainly not knights. The dress is varied but none of it is academical, clerical, religious or military. Even if it could be shown to resemble Middle Eastern clothing of the period, it is hardly credible that the Templars should have magnanimously memorialised their infidel enemies as lively talkative figures at the entrance to their church. With those considerations in mind, we may turn to the individual figures to see whether they provide any clues. There are four figures on the north side and four on the south, so these will be designated N1–4 and S1–4, numbering clockwise.
N1 is now badly defaced but is clearly wearing a mantle fastened in the centre and holding a scroll in the right hand. The headdress is impossible to make out but is not a coif. It is engraved as a crown in the magazine of 1783, helpfully supporting Burton’s conjecture that it represented Henry II, and it is clearly a crown in Smith’s drawing. There also seem to be indications of a crown in the 1912 photograph. It is not, however, the plainer cylindrical crown of Henry II’s day.
N2 is the sharpest of all the figures, but that is seemingly a result of restoration. He is wearing a buttoned tunic with close sleeves and a turn-down collar with rounded points. There is a narrow band over the left shoulder terminating in a slightly broader end at about elbow height. The headdress is a round bonnet or bourrelet. He is also holding a scroll in his left hand. Much the same features are shown in the drawings of 1810 and 1818, though the band on the left shoulder is more three-dimensional and could be seen as a scarf or liripipe attached to the headdress, while the collar appears to be rolled rather than turned down in ‘Peter Pan’ fashion.
N3 is wearing much the same dress, without the appendage on the shoulder, and he is holding a scroll in the right hand. This figure seems also to have been restored, but the general appearance matches the old drawings.
N4 appears to be wearing a closed robe, with pleats at the throat and a round skull-cap (not a coif). Here there is a narrow band or strap on the left shoulder which does not terminate but curves round to the right hip. Zarnecki interpreted these straps as cloaks, which suggests that he did not examine the figures at close quarters.
S1 is very defaced but is clearly wearing a mantle parted in the centre, like N1. The 1912 photograph shows that he was wearing a skull-cap similar to that of N4 and holding a scroll in the left hand.
S2 has a buttoned tunic similar to those of N2 and N3 but is either bareheaded or wearing a skull-cap like S1. He has a strap over the left shoulder extending to the right hip, like that of N4, but no scroll
S3 is unclear even in the 1912 photograph, but the dress seems to be a plain tunic without a shoulder-strap or a scroll.
S4 was in a bad state in 1912, but the photograph shows a long strap over the right shoulder and seemingly a crown, hints of which are also discernible in the laser scans. This figure was omitted from Nash’s drawing and indistinct in Smith’s, which shows objects in both hands but no crown.
If N1 and (perhaps) S4 are indeed wearing crowns, their appearance is nevertheless generic. English kings from Henry II to Henry IV seem in reality to have had beards, but the only portraits readily to hand at the time – their coins – show them all as clean-shaven. Several explanations could be offered for the presence of royalty, but we will leave them aside to concentrate on the other figures.
Who, then, do the other six little figures represent? Since they seem to be wearing lay dress and no beards, the obvious answer – by elimination – is that they must be lawyers or law students. There would be no reason to commemorate random members of the public, who would typically have beards and would not in any case wander in clutching scrolls. The open mouths most naturally indicate speech: presumably not random chatter, but speaking associated in some way with whatever they represent.
The few 14th century images we have of serjeants-at-law show the close-fitting coif tied under the chin. This was a head-covering by then no longer in general use by the middling classes but, like wigs 400 years later, an anachronism preserved as a professional distinction. They also wore hoods with cowls, the judges with mantles on top, or else the undress habit of a tabard with labels (flap-like lapels) – as shown on the effigy of Sir David Hanmer (d. 1387), a King’s Bench judge, in Gresford church near Wrexham. We may therefore discount the possibility that the figures portray senior members of the profession: the few skull-caps shown are not tied under the chin and do not cover the ears, like coifs; the mantles are not fastened on the right shoulder, as was already by 1400 the custom for judges; and there are no hoods with cowls. Serjeants did not, in any case, have any association with the collegiate inns once they took the coif.
That leaves the ‘apprentices of the law’, the learned members of the profession below the rank of serjeant, encompassing both students and what we now call barristers. The apprentices took possession of the Temple around 1340, at once forming two communities centred on the two halls left by the Templars, at least one of which (in The Inner Temple) was rebuilt soon afterwards. Most importantly, they established by the 1350s a system of oral legal education through lecture and disputation. The Temple thus became a new residential law school, an important event in the life of the nation which escaped the notice of chroniclers. This chronology coincides tellingly with that of the sculptures.
The figures are believed to be unique in English art, but there is an interesting parallel with the lively – and far superior – 14th century carvings of Italian law students on the tombs of their professors, now displayed in the Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna. Those on the tomb of the canonist Giovanni di Andea (d. 1348) mostly have identical skull-caps, some with buttoned garments, and one with a mantle. Those on the more famous tomb of Giovanni di Legnano (d. 1383) have either round hats or turbans with the end hanging down (though not reaching the shoulder). The professors and graduate students are wearing their academical dress, not unlike that of our judges and serjeants. Here, then, is confirmation of the varieties of dress appropriate for students at this period.
The few 14th century images we have of serjeants-at-law show the close-fitting coif tied under the chin. This was a head-covering by then no longer in general use by the middling classes but, like wigs 400 years later, an anachronism preserved as a professional distinction.
We have no pictures of English apprentices at law until the mid-15th century, when practising lawyers are shown in the miniature paintings (1450/53) in The Inner Temple library. They had no regular habit comparable to that of the serjeants: the first barristers’ gown (with velvet welts) dated from the time of Elizabeth I, the present gown from 1685. But the miniatures show that apprentices dressed in a similar way to the demi-figures of the previous century. The uniform attire is an ankle-length parti-coloured robe or cassock with a girdle at the waist, close sleeves and a tunic collar, but without the hood, mantle or coif shown for the serjeants and judges. This is simply a formal civilian dress, though the length of the robe marked them out as men of learning. One figure, in the Court of Exchequer, has a diminutive chaperon suspended by a liripipe from his left shoulder. The thin strap over the shoulder of some of the demi-figures is only matched in one of the illustrations, an official sitting at the table in the Court of Chancery. It was most probably the strap of a pouch or satchel for holding pen and ink. Some of the clerks in the King’s Bench and Common Pleas miniatures have removed their penners and inkwells and placed them on the table; but when coming and going these would have been hung from a girdle at the waist, as shown on some 15th century monumental brasses; 14th century fashion did not usually include girdles, and therefore a shoulder-strap would have been necessary.
They survive as remarkable vestiges of the nascent legal societies which went on to flourish in the Temple for seven centuries.
The most convincing conclusion, therefore, is that the non-royal figures represent apprentices of the law. This might seem at first glance like wishful thinking on the part of a legal antiquary from the Temple, daring to contradict the opinion of a recognised art historian. But, weighing all the evidence, who else could they possibly be? Why the apprentices were so immortalised can only be a matter of speculation, though it is plausible to suppose that the sculptures celebrated the establishment of a law school in a place originally intended for a different sort of resident. Whatever the reason, they are the earliest representations of English lawyers not of the coif, and the only images of pre-modern English law students. Though ravaged by time and war, they survive as remarkable vestiges of the nascent legal societies which went on to flourish in the Temple for seven centuries.
Professor Sir John Baker KC LLD FBA
Downing Professor Emeritus of the Laws of England
SOURCES:
• [E. Burton], ‘Observations on the Old Temple Church’ (1783) 53 Gentleman’s Magazine 547–9.
• W. Burge, The Temple Church: an Account of its Restoration and Repairs (1843), at pp. 16–17.
• H. H. L. Bellot, The Temple (4th ed., 1927), p. 46.
• G. Zarnecki, ‘The West Door of the Temple Church in London’ in Beiträge zur Kunst des Mittelalters: Festchrift für Hans Wentzel, ed. R. Beckmann and others (Berlin, 1975), at pp. 251–3.
• J. H. Baker, The Order of Serjeants at Law (1984), pp. 67–83.
• Idem, ‘History of the Gowns worn at the English Bar’ (1975) 9 Costume 15–21, abridged in ‘The Mystery of the Bar Gown’ in Collected Papers on English Legal History (Cambridge, 2013), vol. 2 (esp. at p. 859).
• Idem, ‘Origins of the Inns of Court’ in Collected Papers, vol. 1, pp. 145–57; ‘The Apprentices and their Inns’, ibid. 273–77.