[The following is a shortened version of an article by Dr C.M.Rider, Archivist to the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, which first appeared in The Inner Temple Yearbook 2003/4, pp30-32. It is reprinted by kind permission of the author.] When William Cowper’s first volume of poems was published by Joseph Johnson of St. Paul’s

In 1876, George Herbert and William Cowper were jointly memorialized on a window in St. George’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey2 . This placement of the portraits of ‘Herbert at Bemerton, and Cowper at Olney’ side by side seems natural given their shared history as students at Westminster school and Cowper’s high regard for Herbert’s spiritual