The earliest known reference to Middle Temple
occurs in the Year Book of 12 Richard II (1388) which records the
appointment of "Willelmus Hankforde medii templi" as a Serjeant at Law.
(The same record also refers to Serjeants appointed from Gray's Inn and
Inner Temple.) Another early reference to this Inn is found in the Will
of 1404 of one John Bownt of Bristol with its bequest to Robert
"mancipio Medii Templi": a manciple was a steward, particularly in the
context of a college or educational foundation. Perhaps of greater
interest was the introduction in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales,
written in about 1387, of "A gentil Maunciple . . . of a temple" who
served a society "Of maistres . . . mo than thryes ten". While we
should not suppose that that Inn then counted such a number of
Benchers, a society of more than thirty members was not an
inconsiderable one, with presumably a still larger number of students.
One must assume that Chaucer would have been confident that his readers
would understand the reference. How the Inns were seen by
contemporaries appears from the Paston letters, where in 1440 a writer
speaks of "your College, the Inner Temple".
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