Under the first Richard and the third Henry the Templars increased in pelf, power, and pride.  After a career commenced in zeal and purity, culminating in valor and fanaticism, and closing in corruption and indolence, in the year 1312, when the second Edward sat on the throne of England, the now useless order was formally abolished by Clement V., the reigning Pontiff.  The Temple domain, by grant of the crown, then passed to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who conveyed it to the Earl of Lancaster, a cousin of Edward II.  It was then rented to the professors and students of the common law, who had recently become an incorporate body, In 1333 the Temple had apparently reverted to the crown, for we find Edward III. farming out the rents for twenty-five pounds a year.

The Knights Hospitallers of St. John, meantime, affected to be much scandalized at what they deemed a desecration of holy ground, and claimed the custody of the place.  In 1340, in consideration of a hundred golden guineas contributed toward the armament against France, the king made over the Temple to the Hospitallers.  They handsomely endowed the church with lands, and gave “a thousand fagots yearly from Lillerton Wood to nourish the church fires.”

The records of the Temple date back no further than the reign of Henry VII., so that the history of the previous period; is more or less obscure and traditional:  the precise manner in which the Temple passed from the control of the sword to that of the wig and gown is not certain.  The Hospitallers of St. John, who already possessed a priory at Clerkenwell, in the north of London, after having vindicated the sanctity of the church and cloisters, are believed to have leased the buildings and the demesne to the lawyers for the rent of ten pounds, payable yearly.  Another account says that the latter purchased the property outright.  However this may have been, in the reign of Richard II. we find the legal fraternity of the metropolis securely domiciled in the locality they have ever since tenaciously clung to.

Even so early as the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which the frequenters of each grouped themselves.  Thus arose the Middle and Inner Temple.  Under the eighth Henry the two societies became direct tenants of the crown once more.  In 1609 James I. granted “letters patent to the mansion of the Inner Temple,” at a yearly rent of ten sovereigns; and a like sum was exacted for the Middle Temple.  The societies have not been disturbed in their holdings since that time.

The Temple to-day comprises two of the four great Inns of Court, —­Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple,—­which, taken collectively, constitute the backbone of the legal polity of England.  Ben Jonson described them as “the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in the kingdom.”  They are all of great age and the recipients of rich revenues.  The income of the Middle Temple alone (not the richest of the four) from the single item of rents is about thirteen thousand pounds yearly; but the affairs of the Inns are so shrouded in administrative secrecy that exact information on this topic is not easily obtained.