Qualla: Middle Temple https://qualla.com/middle-temple en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/middle-temple-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Middle Temple https://qualla.com/middle-temple Middle Temple: Introduction https://qualla.com/middle-temple/ Photo credit Patrick Nielsen Hayden from Brooklyn, NY, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night of 2 February 1602, a young company of players performed a new comedy in a candlelit hall off Fleet Street. The play was Twelfth Night, the venue was Middle Temple Hall, and a law student named John Manningham scribbled the date and the play's plot into his diary. That diary entry survives. It is the earliest recorded performance of any Shakespeare play, and the playwright himself was probably in the room. Four centuries later, the same hall stands - with the same double-hammerbeam roof, the same long tables, and one of the same tables said to have been hewn from the timbers of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde. The Middle Temple's job is to train barristers and admit them to the English Bar. Its parallel job, less official, is to act as a kind of seven-hundred-year-old time capsule.

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Image: Patrick Nielsen Hayden from Brooklyn, NY | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/middle-temple-wp/gcpv-middle-temple-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Middle Temple: Why the Lawyers Came https://qualla.com/middle-temple/ Photo credit David Jones, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Inns of Court exist because the Church lost a turf war. In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, English law was taught in the City of London mostly by clergy. A papal bull in 1218 forbade clergy from practising in the secular courts, so common law - which the English k...

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Image: David Jones | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/middle-temple-wp/gcpv-middle-temple-why-the-lawyers-came.mp3 0:06 2 full Middle Temple: Fire and Beer https://qualla.com/middle-temple/ Photo credit Herbert Railton (1857–1910)[1], Public domain. In January 1679, a fire broke out in the Temple that did more damage to the Middle Temple than the Great Fire of 1666 had managed thirteen years earlier. The Thames was frozen so solid that no water could be drawn for the engines; instead, beer was rolled out of the Temple cellar...

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Image: Herbert Railton (1857–1910)[1] | Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/middle-temple-wp/gcpv-middle-temple-fire-and-beer.mp3 0:06 3 full Middle Temple: First Through the Door https://qualla.com/middle-temple/ Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 24 December 1919, Helena Florence Normanton became the first woman to be admitted to any Inn of Court when she joined Middle Temple as a student member. Three weeks later, on 17 January 1920, Olive Clapham became the second woman in any Inn, also at Middle Temple. Clapham pass...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/middle-temple-wp/gcpv-middle-temple-first-through-the-door.mp3 0:06 4 full Middle Temple: Goldsmith and Blackstone https://qualla.com/middle-temple/ Photo credit Oosoom at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. In Brick Court, the poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith - author of The Vicar of Wakefield and She Stoops to Conquer - kept rooms from 1765, and threw raucous parties attended by Samuel Johnson and most of the literary establishment. The floor below was occupied by Sir William B...

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Image: Oosoom at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/middle-temple-wp/gcpv-middle-temple-goldsmith-and-blackstone.mp3 0:06 5 full Middle Temple: Liberty in the Middle of London https://qualla.com/middle-temple/ Photo credit steve_w from London, UK, CC BY 2.0. Middle Temple is a liberty - a peculiar geographic and legal term meaning an area historically outside the jurisdiction of the City of London Corporation. The liberty is governed by its own Parliament, made up of Benchers (senior barristers and judges) elected for life, headed by...

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Image: steve_w from London, UK | CC BY 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/middle-temple-wp/gcpv-middle-temple-liberty-in-the-middle-of-london.mp3 0:06 6 full