satisfaction. Not the least lucky of the party was the historian of "the pomp and glory, if not vanity of the show," who having survived the Commonwealth and witnessed the Restoration, was permitted to retain his paternal estate, and in his last days could tell his numerous descendants how his old chum, Edward Hyde, had risen, fallen, and-passed to another world.

WITH

WITH the revival of gaiety which attended and followed the Restoration, revels and masques came once more into vogue at the Inns of Court, where, throughout the Commonwealth, plays had been prohibited, and festivals had been either abolished or deprived of their ancient hilarity. The caterers of amusement for the new king were not slow to suggest that he should honour the lawyers with a visit; and in accordance with their counsel, His Majesty took water on August 15, 1661, and went in the royal barge from Whitehall to the Temple to dine at the Reader's feast.

Heneage Finch had been chosen Autumn Reader of that inn, and in accordance with ancient usage he demonstrated his ability to instruct young gentlemen in the principles of English law, by giving a series of costly banquets. From the days of the Tudors to the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the Reader's feasts had been amongst the most sumptuous and ostentatious entertainments of the town-the Serjeant's feasts scarcely surpassing them in splendour, the inaugural dinners of lord mayors often lagging behind them in expense. But Heneage Finch's lavish hospitality outstripped the doings of all previous readers. His revel was protracted throughout six days, and on each of these days he received at his table the representative members of some high social order or learned body. Beginning with a dinner to the nobility and Privy Councillors, he finished with a banquet to the king; and on the intervening days he entertained the civic authorities, the College of Physicians, the civil lawyers, and the dignitaries of the Church.

The king's visit was attended with imposing ceremony, and wanted no circumstance that could have rendered the occasion

more honourable to the host or to the society of which he was a member. All the highest officers of the court accompanied the monarch, and when he stepped from his barge at the Temple Stairs, he spoke with jovial urbanity to his entertainer and the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who received him with tokens of loyal deference and attachment. "On each side," says Dugdale, "as His Majesty passed, stood the reader's servants in scarlet cloaks and white tabba doublets; there being a way made through the wall into the Temple Gardens; and above them on each side the benchers, barristers, and other gentlemen of the society, all in their gowns and formalities, the loud music playing from the time of his landing till he entered the hall; where he was received with xx violins, which continued as long as his majesty stayed." Fifty chosen gentlemen of the inn, wearing their academic gowns, placed dinner on the table, and waited upon the feasters-no other servants being permitted to enter the hall during the progress of the banquet. On the dais at the top of the hall, under a canopy of state, the king and his brother James sat apart from men of lower degree, whilst the nobles of Whitehall occupied one long table, under the presidency of the Lord Chancellor, and the chief personages of the inn dined at a corresponding long table, having the reader for their chairman.

In the following January, Charles II. and the Duke of York honoured Lincoln's Inn with a visit, whilst the mock Prince de la Grange held his court within the walls of that society. This visit was made on the 3rd day of the month;

* Mr. Pearce, usually a most accurate, and always a very entertaining author, errs in giving the first day of the month as the date of the visit. He was misled by the following entry in John Evelyn's Diary:-"1661-2, 1st January. I went to London, invited to the solemn foolerie of the Prince de la Grange, at Lincoln's Inn, where came the King, Duke, &c. It began with a grand masque and a formal pleading before the mock Princes, Grandees, Nobles, and Knights of the Inn. He had his Lord Chancellor, Chamberlain, Treasurer, and other Royal Officers, gloriously clad and attended. It ended in a magnificent banquet. One Mr. Lort was the young spark who maintained the pageantry." The next entry in the diary bears date January 6th; and the previous entry is dated December 23. To the memorandum concerning Mr. Lort's brave doings in Lincoln's Inn, Evelyn fixed the date of the day on which he returned to town after spending the Christmas in the country. It is needless to say that the revels lasted several days-at the least from Christmas

and Samuel Pepys was bargaining for some pictures with Faithorne the engraver, when from the artist's window he saw the Life Guards ride past, escorting their highnesses to the revels.

Nine years later in the February of 1671-King Charles and his brother James again visited Lincoln's Inn, on which occasion they were entertained by Sir Francis Goodericke, Knt., the reader of the inn, who seems almost to have gone beyond

Eve to Twelfth Night, inclusive; but the diarist gives a summary of the entire proceedings under the heading of one day. In like manner, referring to events that happened twenty years before, in the time of Charles I., John Evelyn says, under date Dec. 15, 1641 :-" I was elected one of the Comptrollers of the Middle Temple revellers, as the fashion of the young students and gentlemen was, the Christmas being kept this year with great solemnity; but being desirous to pass it in the country, I got leave to resign my staff of office, and went with my brother Richard to Wotton." The next entry in the diary being-" Jan. 10, 1642. I gave a visit to my cousin Hatton, of Ditton." Thus, the diarist was elected a Comptroller, accepted the office, resigned his staff, and went with his brother to the country-events which of course did not happen on the same day, though they are grouped under one date. The youthful reader of Evelyn will be spared much trouble and saved from many slips by bearing in mind that the diary abounds with entries containing notices of events posterior to the dates affixed to the passages, and that it is throughout a compilation of memoranda making no pretension to exactness with regard to questions of time. Evelyn composed his diary in his later years from memoranda made with no great care at earlier periods; and whilst he summarized past events, he did not fear to fill out his meagre notes from the stores of a treacherous memory. Strictly the work is not a diary—i.e., a journal of events filled in day by day—but an Old Man's Autobiography, composed in the form of a diary. Instead of making any disguise about the matter, Evelyn is quite frank as to the nature of his operations; and by his use of the historic form, by the whole scheme, and by many details of his work, he informs us that he is writing from memory, and is not in the strict sense of the term keeping a journal. At the outset, having told that he was born on October 31, 1620, and having given a few particulars concerning his father, mother, birth-place, and infancy, he makes the following entry:—“1623. The very first thing that I can call to memory, and from which time forward I began to observe, was this year (1623), my youngest brother being in his nurse's arms, who, being then two years and nine months younger than myself, was the last child of my dear parents." This is the style of an autobiographer, not of a diarist. A very different writer was Samuel Pepys. The young, keen, loquacious, pushing government clerk wrote his diary whilst he lived through the events which it notices. "Old Pepys," as he is now called, was Young Pepys" throughout the time covered by his "Diary," in which he noted occurrences, day by day, as they occurrred. With regard to the Prince de la Grange's revel be observes ::- "Jan. 3, 1661-2. To Faithorne's, and there bought some pictures of him; and while I was there, comes by the king's life-guard, he being gone to Lincoln's Inne this afternoon to see the Revells there; there being, according to an old custome, a prince and all his nobles, and other matters of sport and change" As his eye runs over this passage, the reader can hear the clatter and hubbub of Charles II.'s Strand.

VOL. II.

G

Heneage Finch in sumptuous profusion of hospitality. Of this royal visit a particular account is to be seen in the Admittance Book of the Honourable Society, from which it appears that the royal brothers were attended by the Dukes of Monmouth and Richmond; the Earls of Manchester, Bath, and Anglesea; Viscount Halifax, the Bishop of Ely, Lord Newport, Lord Henry Howard, and "divers others of great qualitie.” On entering the garden of the inn, by the gates which opened into Chancery Lane near Holborn, the king was received by Sir Francis Goodericke and the other benchers, who " attended his majestie up to the tarras walke, next the field, and soe through the garden; the trumpetts and kettle drums, from the leades over the highest bay window, in the middle of the garden building, sounding all the while."

The entertainment in most respects was a repetition of Sir Heneage Finch's feast-the king, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert dining on the dais at the top of the hall, whilst the persons of inferior though high quality were regaled at two long tables, set down the hall; and the gentlemen of the inn condescending to act as menial servants. The reader himself, dropping on his knee when he performed the servile office, proffered the towel with which the king prepared himself for the repast; and barristers of ancient lineage and professional eminence contended for the honour of serving His Majesty with sirloin and cheesecake upon the knee, and hastened with the alacrity of well-trained lacqueys to do the bidding of "the lords att their table." Having eaten and drunk to his lively satisfaction, Charles called for the Admittance Book of the Inn, and placed his name on the roll of members, thereby conferring on the society an honour for which no previous king of England had furnished a precedent. Following their chief's example, the Duke of York and Prince Rupert and the other nobles forthwith joined the fraternity of lawyers; and hastily donning students' gowns, they mingled with the troop of gowned servitors, and humbly waited on their liege lord.*

The feasting on this occasion was not confined to the hall. Whilst the king ate his three courses and elaborate dessert on the dais of the refectory, the gentlemen of the horse-guards dined off venison and claret in the old council-chamber, the yeomen