t ' Segar.' Harleian MSS . 1912. 94, c. 25. Plut, xlvii. E folio.
MEMOIB OF EICHAED SIBBES, D.D. xli
and Chetwinds, Drakes and Egertons, Fairfaxes and Fitzgeralds, Nevills and Pelhams, Riches and Sidneys, Staffords and Stanleys, Standishes and Talbots, "Wallers, and Vaughans, and Veres.* Truly the wheel-wright's son has a worthy audience ; ay, and what is better, he is worthy of the audience.
At the date of Sibbes's appointment, the greatest of all the names enumerated, Francis Bacon, had ' chambers ' in Gray's Inn ; and, after his fall, was a permanent resident.-j* When it was dark with him, he had Sibbes for his ' preacher.' Am I wrong in thinking that the touching appeal of the stricken Lord Chancellor to his peers, recorded by every biographer, ' I am a bruised reed' may have been a reminiscence of the golden-syllabled words which he had heard from the 'preacher' at Gray's Inn ?
I know not that the author of the Bruised Reed is once named
* ' Gray's Inn.' I may give in a foot-note, from Segar's folio, the earlier history of the Society with which the name of Sibbes is so indissolubly associated. Having recited certain ancient mediseval-Latin records, which are also supplemented by prior relations to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, the chronicler proceeds : —
'By all V"" severall offices, it appeares that the said manor of Portepole, now Gray's Inne, or within ye which a part of Graye's Inne is now situate, was anciently the Inheritance of the Grayes. But I do not find in any of ye said former, &c. . . , that any Gray, lord or owner of ye said manor or messuage, did at any time reside there. Keginald de Gray, in ye 44th year of ye reign of Kinge Edw. 3, for ye yearly ren' of Q ('?), as is mentioned in ye office, then found after his decease. And in ye w* office (the same beinge in form"^ inquisitions named mesuagium), is thereby fouid to he hospitium and in lease whereby it's manifested yt. ye house then and yet Inowne by the name of Gray's Inn, was demised to some p'sons of speciall regard and rank, and not to meane ones, or p'sons of meane or privat behav'-, but to such as were united into a Society p'fessinge ye lawes, that in those daycs begunn to congregat and setle themselves within ye Court (?) as an associated company entertayning hospitalitie together. And then this house grew to be off an higher title in ienominacon and became to be totally termed by ye Intitulacon of Hospitium in Portopole. And it also appeareth that ye said Keginald de Gray devised ye saic messuage as aforesaid in ye reigne of King Edw. 3. in his life- time, and at his death was held for liospitium and by the jury before whom ye said inquisition was taken in ye said 44th yeare of Edw. 3d (a" 1370), was found to bee hospitium, and not mesuaginm. Imediatly whereupon ye said hospitium is called Grey's Itne, or Hospitium Graiorum, for that that estate had been see long and by 8oe man/ severall descents in yt name,' &c. &c. &c.
This quaint and curious narrative, which I believe is now for the first time pub- lished, explains the origin of the name ' Gray's Inn.' Those interested will find much aiditional information in Segar, — all the more valuable that many of the originas were destroyed by a fire at Gray's Inn. These missing portions have been transcrhed, but not very accurately, for the Hon. Society.
t ' lacon and Gray's Inn.' See an interesting chapter of an unusually interest- ing, bat not very accurate, book, Meteyard's ' Hallowed Sjiots of Ancient London ' (4tJ, 1862), entitled 'York House, Strand, and Gray's Inn,' pp. 80-99. An engrav- ing of ' Gray's Inn ' is given on page 90. I need hardly say that all the old build- irgs, and the ' faire gardenne,' with its Bacon-planted elms, have long disappeared.
Xlii MEMOIK OF EICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
in all Bacon's writings, but then neither is Shakespeare. Still, I cannot help rejoicing that, in his closing years of humiliation and penitence, while he was building up the Cyclopean masonry of his * Novum Organum,' he had Richard Sibbes to lift his thoughts higher. I delight to picture to myself the mighty thinker and the heavenly preacher walking in the 'faire gardenne' of the Inn, holding high and sanctified discourse.* I fancy I can trace the influence of Sibbes on Bacon, and of Bacon on Sibbes. There are in Sibbes many aphoristic sayings, pregnant seeds of thought, felicitous ' similies ' (so marked on the early margins), that bear the very mintage of the ' Essays ;' and again there is in them an insight into Scripture, a working in of its cloth-of-gold with his own medi- tations, an apposite quotation of its facts and words, that surely came of the sermons and private talk under the elms with Sibbes. It is something to know that two such men knew each other.
The ' Bruised Reed ' and ' Soul's Conflict,' and indeed nearly all his works, present specimens of the kind of preaching to which the auditory of 'Gray's Inn' listened from Sunday to Sunday, One is gladdened to think that such men heard such preaching, so wise, so grave, so fervid, so Christful. There grew out of it life-long friendships.