Edmund Plowden is a figure of central importance to the Inn’s history, as well as having been a notable legal figure in his day. Admitted as a student member in the mid-sixteenth century, after studying philosophy and law at Oxford and Cambridge, he went on to a successful career at the Bar. A Roman Catholic in a time when that invited disadvantage and persecution, he became known for defending his co-religionists, and due to his faith was never raised to the judicial bench. A favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, it is said that she offered to make him Lord Keeper if he would change his religion, but that he refused to do so. He was known for his Case Reports, published in 1571. He served as the Inn’s Reader in 1557 and 1560, and as Treasurer from 1561 to 1567. It was during his Treasurership that the construction of Hall began, and he continued to manage the project until its completion in the early 1570s. His contribution to the Society is commemorated by his marble bust at the East end of Hall, and his coat of arms in the stained glass window of the south transept.

Henry Percy was the eldest son of the 8th Earl of Northumberland and succeeded to the Earldom in 1585. He was admitted to the Inn in 1594 on the same day as his younger brother, Sir Charles Percy, though there is no record of his ever having practiced the law. He had a successful military career in the Low Countries and in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, was engaged in scientific and alchemical experiments, and moved in literary circles. Following the accession of James I to the English throne, Percy became implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, owing to the involvement of his second cousin once removed Thomas Percy, and was imprisoned and fined £30,000. He spend seventeen years in the Tower of London, during which he occupied himself in mathematical studies, gaining the sobriquet ‘The Wizard Earl’, and also had a bowling alley installed in his prison tower.

Born in 1569 in Wiltshire and educated at Winchester and Oxford, he was at New Inn (one of the Inns of Chancery) before progressing to the Middle Temple in 1588. Called in 1595, he was involved in several disciplinary matters, culminating in 1598 when he assaulted fellow Middle Templar Richard Martin in Hall with a ‘bastionado’ and escaped the Inn by boat to Oxford, being expelled and disbarred in absentia shortly afterwards. Devoting his time to poetry, writing such notable works as Nosce Teipsum, Hymnes of Astraea, he became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I and was rehabilitated at the Middle Temple in 1601. He progressed under King James I through a successful legal career, serving as Attorney General for Ireland from 1606 and being appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in 1626, although he died before taking office.