The Ceremonial Plate of the Middle Temple

Master John Leslie was a Queen’s Bench Master from 1996 to 2016 and has been a Bencher of the Inn since 2002. He was appointed Master of the Silver in 2017. He grew up surrounded by silver, as his father’s business was in the London Silver Vaults; so he has had an interest in it all his life.

The Inn’s Silver Catalogue lists ‘The Ceremonial Plate of the Middle Temple and the New Inn’. In particular it describes two ‘Panierman’s Horns’, nine ‘Badges for Watchmen, Porters or Warders’, three ‘Ceremonial Porter’s Staves’ and a large ‘Silver Oval Breastplate’. Immediately, some questions may arise: ‘Who was a “panierman” and why did he have two horns?’. ‘What is or was the “New Inn” and why does the Inn have its plate?’

The Horns and the Panierman

The older of the horns is made from an elephant’s tusk with five silver bands, but with a replacement mouthpiece mounted on a section of buffalo horn; the silver bears the hallmark for 1716. The Inn’s records show that it was acquired in 1716/17 for the then panierman, Richard Claypoole. As it is very fragile it has been mounted on a plinth, which bears the date 1927. Its fragility probably led to it being out of use by the early 20 th Century as the second horn first appears in the records in 1904. This is altogether simpler, being entirely of buffalo horn with the rim and mouthpiece in silver; hallmarked for 1903. The Oxford English Dictionary gives ‘pannier’ as a variant of ‘panier’ and defines it as a large basket for carrying food, etymologically originating from the French ‘pain’ and Latin ‘panis’ – bread – thus, perhaps, originally a breadbasket. Its contemporary meaning has come to include the bags or containers slung on a motorcycle, viz those slung on beasts of burden. The Dictionary then defines the word ‘pannierman’ as ‘the name of a paid officer in the Inns of Court who brought provisions from

The Panierman’s Horn market (with a horse and panniers) and had (in later times at least) various duties in connection with the serving of the meals etc.’ and, further, quotes a work of 1661, stating that the pannierman’s ‘Office was to blow the Horn for Dinner and wait at the Barristers table’.

The Inner Temple also had a panierman and their Horn remains in their collection. It dates from about 1785 and is similar in form to the more modern one in our collection. This conjures up an audio picture of the potential cacophony as the Horns were sounded around the Middle and Inner Temples as dinner approached. Incidentally, the writer remembers that the tradition of blowing the Horn around the Inn to announce dinner continued into the late 1960’s or early 1970’s (then by the Head Porter). At certain times of the year this was at the same time as the lamplighter made his rounds of the gas lamps. The legend was then current that the sounding of the Horn had originated as the means to call the young gentlemen students of the Inn back from wild fowling in the marshes on the south side of the Thames before the door to Hall was locked for dinner.

Badges and the New Inn There are seven badges for the Middle Temple officers and two for those of the New Inn. The former date from 1828 to 1851 and have the Inn’s emblem of the Holy Lamb chased onto them; this derives from the coat of arms of the Middle Temple blazoned, in heraldic terms, as ‘Argent on a plain Cross Gules, the Holy Lamb Or’ familiar to all Middle Templars as describing a red cross on a white ground with the Paschal Lamb at the cross. The latter two badges date from 1833 and bear the coat of arms of the New Inn, which are blazoned as ‘Vert a Flower-pot Argent maintaining Gilly-flowers Gules’ which may be described as ‘A silver/ white vase containing red carnations on a green ground’. These were the badges of office of the Watchmen, Porters and Warders of the Inns – each is named and numbered thus: the Middle Temple badges – ‘Watchman No. 1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’; ‘No.4 Watchman and Porter’; ‘Porter No. 5’ and ‘Warder No.1’ and ‘2’ and the New Inn badges – ‘Porter No.1’ and ‘2’. These officers were constituted constables within their Inns.

The New Inn was an Inn of Chancery. These Inns (over time they totalled about nine in number) were so called from their origin in about the 14 th Century as the offices of and accommodation for clerks in Chancery who were in holy orders; they worked for the Lord Chancellor, who himself at that time was also always a cleric. Although the origin of the names of these Inns and of the Court of Chancery (now the Chancery Division of the High Court) is the same, the members of these Inns, as they evolved, were by no means confined to the Chancery Bar. Over time, the Inns evolved into college-like establishments where students prepared for entry to an Inn of Court, each Inn of Chancery