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admitted with a verdingale (farthingale—a hooped petticoat). On one of these festive occasions, it was Candlemas Day, and the Judges were pres ent, an unfortunate contretemps occurred. The whole Bar refused to dance, much to the mortification of the Benchers who had to do the dancing themselves, and "for ex ample sake" they, the Bar, were put out of commons with a threat that "yf the like fault be committed herehence they shall be fyned or disbarred. The dances most affected were the Galliard and the Coranto. On these occasions of revelling the fair sex, at Lincoln's Inn at all events, were severely excluded, except as spectators. The Chief Butler is ordered "to keepe lockt the stayre foot doore leading to the gallery where they stoode."
THE NEW CHAPEL. In 1518 the Society had built the great Gateway which still forms the most inter esting portion of the Inn. A hundred years later on the strength of its increasing pros perity the Benchers determined to build a new chapel. It was to be a "fair large chapel with double chambers under ¡t, afterwards abandoned in favor of cloisters. It was to cost £2000 and to be designed by Mr. "Indicho" (Iñigo) Jones. We have the result before us today. Such was the throng of noblemen and gentlemen at the consecration, May 22, 1623, that several were "taken up dead for the time with the extreme press and thronging. The open ing sermon was preached by Dr. Donne, the Dean of St. Paul's, whilom a valued member of the Society, a master of poetical conceits, a distinguished civilian, a great divine and preacher. To his contemporar ies Donne was a much greater man than Shakespeare, and today—so the whirligig of time brings about its revenges—who knows anything of the learned and eloquent Dean except as the subject of one of old
Isaak Walton's charming biographies? The Bible in 6 volumes, with a Latin inscription presented to the Society by Dr. Donne and gratefully acknowledged by the Benchers. may still be seen in the Library. Of these and many other matters we may read in his quaint commentary on the times: how frequent were the visitations of the Plague in London and how the Benchers had to "take to flight" to escape them, how Queen Elizabeth went to St. Paul's to re turn thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada; how "slack" some of the gentle men of the Inn were in "receiving of the Communion," and how that slackness caused them to incur the suspicion of being Popish recusants and to have interrogatories administered to them by Lord Burleigh: how Prynne, the intrepid author of the "Histrio-Mastix,—dedicated by the way to the Benchers—was "utterly expelled out of the Societie," after the Star Chamber's sen tence; how Sir Matthew Hale began his career in a half chamber in the Garden Court, "in the third staircase, three stories high; how the Society tried to get the learned Selden's library on his death, but had to give it up, owing to "soe many difficultyes;" how Mr. Speaker Lenthall would not return the Society its "three dripping pans" lent to him; how Mr. William Ash ley, the Chapel Reader, was allowed twenty nobles in addition to his stipend "bv reason of his great chardge of his dyett in the vacacyon tyme and for the furnishinge of his chamber and to supply himselfe with books to enable him for the due perform ance of the wighty charge that lyeth uppon him;" of these and many other matters equally instructive and amusing we may read in these pages. Not the least delight ful part of them, to the modern eye, weary of sameness, is the refreshing unconventionality of the spelling, inexhaustible in its varietv.
