Return To Temple And The Inns of Court

We visited the Inns of Court and Temple back in 2021, but the church itself was closed due to Covid. We tried again this year, with success, and even managed to find Gray's Inn as well, site of the first known performance of The Comedy of Errors (28 December, 1594, according to the Gesta Grayorum). The significance of this will become clear(er) in due course. The Inns of Court are Britain's national college of law, sort of, at least for the higher echelons of legal practice. My take on them and the British legal system generally is in the 2021 Temple post https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2021/08/temple-and-inns-of-court.html. Our focus this visit was rather more the Temple, the Templars' 12th century replica of the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. It is important for much more than that, however...

The Temple: the roundish bit is called--imaginatively--the Round,
and functions as the nave; the longish bit serves as the chancel; the 
whole was consecrated in 1185, presided over by the Archbishop of
Jerusalem; the chancel was rebuilt a century later, the Round
renovated and redecorated several times over the centuries,
notably by Christopher Wren, among others; the Round was rebuilt
after German bombs fairly wrecked the place in 1941

The Templars were perhaps the most powerful and wealthy
secular order in the high Middle Ages, feared and envied by
kings and popes, and the Temple was the headquarters of
their London branch

Interior views; it's not huge, but the verticality prohibits fuller
views, especially with my phone's lens

Effigies and such all around, especially from the 13th century,
the height of the Temple's historic importance; reconstructed
after the Blitz, some casts from the V&A

Re-dedication in 1958 attended by the Queen, the Duke,
the Queen Mother, among others; a place sacred in English
history...

View of the chancel

Interpretive signage is everywhere...a few early bits about
the Templars and the Temple, the rest about what happened
here in 1215, and its aftermath

The Temple was King John's London HQ, and it was
here that the barons first presented him with their demands;
his response at the time was basically "Let me get back to
you on that," and they got back to him a few months later at
Runnymede, forcing his signature on the new Magna Carta;
he shortly repudiated it and even had the pope pronounce it
null and void ("under duress"); things got even messier after
that, with new drafts, negotiations, agreements, repudiations,
etc.; happily for everyone else, John died in 1216...

...and William Marshal, who had been loyal to the king,
took over as regent for the 9 year-old heir Henry III; 
Marshal then decisively blessed the new Magna Carta before
his own death in 1219; and the rest is...

And among the history...quite a few of the signers of the
American Declaration of Independence were alums of
the Inner and Middle Temple Inns of Court 

"Cradle of the Common Law" indeed

Moving right along, we are now walking up Chancery
Lane, looking for Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn, and
looking into the legal regalia shops

Lincoln's Inn of the Inns of Court; I think

Now in the courtyard of Gray's Inn, Vicki, who has a nose for libraries,
spots the Gray's Inn library, where they are airing things out; or possibly
something else

After discussion with a few seemingly knowledgeable residents,
we concluded this was the site of the December 28, 1594, first known
performance of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, "by a company of
base and common fellows"...

Street scene thereabouts; love old London

Aptly named restaurant for the area...

Right around the corner, on Fleet Street, are the Royal Courts of Justice