Meetings of the Middle Temple Historical Society are open to all members, staff, friends of the Inn and their guests who are welcome to attend a meeting before becoming members. We meet four times a year, usually in the Bench apartments for drinks at 6.30pm followed by an informal buffet supper and a talk on an historical topic, usually with a legal theme. Meetings finish at 9.15pm.
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The Bar in England and Wales is divided into six regions, which are more commonly known as ‘Circuits’. The Circuits provide important sources of support, advice and representation for barristers practising in those areas.
Uncovering some of the more unusual and unexpected material which has come into the archive's custody by gift, donation or serendipitous accident.
Exploring the long and winding history of Readers and readings at the Middle Temple, from the dull to the debauched, and looking at the disruptions of the Civil War, the first female Reader and an unexpected royal visit.
Edmund Burke was not only an Anglo-Irish parliamentarian, statesman, orator and political philosopher who still has some political influence, he was also a Middle Templar. His biographer, Professor Bourke, will challenge us to rethink his legacy.
Professor Richard Bourke FBA, Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Kings College. Recorded on Wednesday 31 March 2021
Introduction
Gilbert Burnet’s The History of the Reformation of the Church of England … the fourth edition
Although we know that the Inn had a small library prior to 1540, an early account about the Inns of Court states that Middle Temple ‘had a simple library in which were not many bookes besides the law and that library by meanes that it stood always open, and that the learners had not each a key unto it, it was at last robbed of all the bookes in it’!
Background