Tea at Trianon: The Temple Church of London

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

The Temple Church of London

From Abbey of Misrule:

The Temple, meanwhile, is accessed down windy little lanes which look more like the backstreets of Oxford than central London. There’s a reason for that. This area is home to the four ancient ‘Inns of Court’, all of which have excellent Tolkeiny names: Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple. London is a city whose place names sometimes seem to have been invented for the specific purpose of appearing in a fantasy novel. Consider some of the stops on the Tube network: Shepherd’s Bush, White City, Mansion House, Tower Hill, Earl’s Court. You imagine dreamy meadows, knights errant pursuing dragons, stone palaces behind high walls, glittering spires. And then you actually visit.
Alas, the Inns of Court are also less Romantic in reality than they sound: they are the place where British barristers go to learn their trade. But even though barristers are far more boring than knights, the Inns of Court still look like they belong in another age, resembling Oxford colleges or Tudor Palaces, at least from the outside.
But why are lawyers learning about tort theory in a place that sounds like it was named by Aleister Crowley? Could there possibly be an interesting historical explanation? Thrillingly enough, the answer is yes.
The Temple got its name because originally it was home to a mysterious and mystical medieval order that everyone has surely heard of: the Knights Templar. The Templars - or, to give them their proper name, the ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon’, were founded in France in the wake of the First Crusade, when a group of knights set themselves the task of protecting Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over time, they became a wealthy, influential and powerful religious order. Committed, like monks, to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, they were also committed, unlike monks, to smiting with their blades the enemies of Christ. (Read more.)