"Besides encounters at the bar Are braver now than those in war, In which the law does execution With less disorder and confusion; Has more of honour in't, some hold, Not like the new way, but the old, When those the pen had drawn together Decided quarrels with the feather, And winged arrows killed as dead, And more than bullets now of lead: So all their combats now, as then, Are managed chiefly by the pen; That does the feat, with braver vigours, In words at length, as well as figures."
The settlement of the lawyers in the Temple was brought about in the following manner.
On the imprisonment of the Knights Templars, the chief house of the order in London, in common with the other property of the military monks, was seized into the king's hands, and was committed to the care of James le Botiller and William de Basing, who, on the 9th of December, A. D. 1311, were commanded to hand it over to the sheriffs of London, to be taken charge of by them.[545] Two years afterwards the Temple was granted to that powerful nobleman, Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, who had been one of the leaders of the baronial conspiracy against Piers Gavaston.[546] As Thomas earl of Lancaster, however, claimed the Temple by escheat as the immediate lord of the fee, the earl of Pembroke, on the 3rd of Oct., A. D. 1315, at the request of the king, and in consideration of other lands being granted to him by his sovereign, remised and released all his right and title therein to Lancaster.[547] This earl of Lancaster was cousin-german to the English monarch, and first prince of the blood; he was the most powerful and opulent subject of the kingdom, being possessed of no less than six earldoms, with a proportionable estate in land, and at the time that the Temple was added to his numerous other possessions he was at the head of the government, and ruled both the king and country as president of the council. In an antient MS. account of the Temple, formerly belonging to lord Somers and afterwards to Nicholls, the celebrated antiquary, apparently written by a member of the Inner Temple, it is stated that the lawyers "made composition with the earl of Lancaster for a lodging in the Temple, and so came hither, and have continued here ever since." That this was the case appears highly probable from various circumstances presently noticed.