"VETUSTISSIMA TEMPLARIORUM PORTICU IGNE CONSUMTA, ANNO 1678, NOVA HÆC, SUMPTIBUS MEDII TEMPLI EXTRUCTA ANNO 1681 GULIELMO WHITELOCKE ARMIGERO, THESAURARIO.
"The very antient portico of the Templars being consumed by fire in the year 1678, these new buildings were erected at the expense of the Middle Temple in the year 1681, William Whitlock, esq., being treasurer."
The cloisters of the Templars formed the medium of communication between the hall, the church, and the cells of the serving brethren of the order.[543]
During the formation of the present new entrance into the Temple by the church, at the bottom of the Inner Temple-lane, a considerable portion of the brickwork of the old houses was pulled down, and an antient wall of great thickness was disclosed. It was composed of chalk, rag-stone, and rubble, exactly resembling the walls of the church. It ran in a direction east and west, and appeared to have formed the extreme northern boundary of the old convent.
The site of the remaining buildings of the antient Temple cannot now be determined with certainty.
The mansion-house, (_Mansum Novi Templi_,) the residence of the Master and knights, who were lodged separately from the serving brethren and ate at a separate table, appears to have stood at the east end of the hall, on the site of the present library and apartments of the masters of the bench.
The proud and powerful Knights Templars were succeeded in the occupation of the TEMPLE by a body of learned lawyers, who took possession of the old hall and the gloomy cells of the military monks, and converted the chief house of their order into the great and most antient Common Law University of England.
For more than five centuries the retreats of the religious warriors have been devoted to "the studious and eloquent pleaders of causes," a new kind of Templars, who, as Fuller quaintly observes, now "defend one Christian from another as the old ones did Christians from Pagans." The modern Templars have been termed _milites justitiæ_, or "_soldiers of justice_," for, as John of Salisbury, a writer of the twelfth century, saith, "neque reipublicæ militant soli illi, qui galeis thoracisque muniti in hostes exercent tela quælibet, sed et patroni causarum, qui lapsa erigunt, fatigata reparant, nec minus provident humano generi, quam si laborantium vitam, spem, posterosque, armorum præsidio, ab hostibus tuerentur." "They do not alone fight for the state who, panoplied in helmets and breastplates, wield the sword and the dart against the enemy, for the pleaders of causes, who redress wrongs, who raise up the oppressed, do protect and provide for the human race as much as if they were to defend the lives, fortunes, and families of industrious citizens with the sword."[544]