In Milton's middle life the learned Selden, who died in 1654, was buried in the choir of the Temple church. Of him Milton writes that he is "one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land." When Milton was in his thirty-sixth year and had published his treatise on divorce, he writes of Selden, then in his sixtieth year, whose acquaintance he had probably made, and begged those who would know the truth to "hasten to be acquainted with that noble volume written by our learned Selden, of 'The Law of Nature and of Nations,' a work more useful and more worthy to be perused, whoever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity, and justice, than all those decretals ... which the pontifical clerks have doted on." Of his well-known "Table Talk," Coleridge observes: "There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer."
One of the greatest names connected with the Temple is that of Richard Hooker, author of the famous "Ecclesiastical Polity." He was for six years Master of the Temple--a position which Izaak Walton, who wrote his life, says he accepted rather than desired. The interest in music in the seventeenth century is evinced by the fierce contest which lasted for a year, as to the organ which should be erected in this church. Two organs were put up by rivals. The great Purcell performed on one which was finally selected by Judge Jeffreys of the Inner Temple. He was a capital musician, and in his case at least the adage seemed disproved that "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."
With the Restoration and the opening of the floodgates of luxury and licentiousness, which the stern Puritan had for twenty years kept in abeyance, the Temple renewed the banquets and merry-makings of an earlier day. At a continuous banquet which lasted half a month, the Earl of Nottingham kept open house to all London, and entertained all the great and powerful of the time. Fifty servants waited on Charles II. and his company, while twenty violins made merry music at the feast.
The Great Fire of 1666 ceased ere it reached the Temple church, but it was not stopped until many sets of chambers and title-deeds of a vast number of valuable estates had perished. Another fire only a dozen years later destroyed much more of the establishment which Milton knew. Of the Inner Temple Hall little exists to-day that his eyes rested on. But the stately Middle Temple Hall, built in 1572, still stands, and is one of the best specimens of Elizabethan architecture that London boasts. The open roof of hammer-beam design, with pendants, is especially characteristic of the work of that period. The screen is an elaborate one of Renaissance work, more interesting for its age and associations than for its conformity to true principles of art. This famous hall witnessed the performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" in 1601. The same strong, oak tables of the days of Bacon, Coke, and Jonson still stretch from end to end. Viewed from the western dais, the portraits, armour, and rich windows combine with the massive furniture and carved screen to present a scene of sober richness hardly equalled outside of a few dining-halls of Oxford and Cambridge which belong to that same period. Among the eminent men of the Middle Temple whose lives Milton's life touched were Sir Walter Raleigh, John Pym, Ireton,--Cromwell's son-in-law,--Evelyn, Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and many others of equal note in their day.