Several records reveal the connection between revellry and wrong-doing: "[a]lmost by definition revels (root: 'rebellare,' to rebel) entailed a breach of order, though within strict limits [...] Inns of Court gentlemen were occasionally admonished, chastised, or fined for breaches of the peace." (Nelson and Elliott xxxvii)
In the Middle Temple Parliament Book of 1590-1 (ff 214v-15), a lengthy extract from the 5 February 1591 parliament describes a punishment meted out to eight members of the house, as well as "divers others as yet not certainelie known to the Maisters of the Bench", for acts of vandalism and verbal abuse perpretrated on Candlemas night. The eight gentlemen were fined £20 each (approximately £6800 in modern currency); if the fines were not paid by the end of Hilary term, it was decreed that 'everie of them be expulsed out of this house & societie./'
Among the miscreants were John Davies and Richard Martin - both of whom developed reputations for scurrilous behaviour and violence even while they became respected and powerful members of Parliament, poets, and wits. Davies was expelled from Middle Temple in 1592, disbarred in 1598 and thrown into the Tower for brawling with Martin and beating him with a cudgel. For his part Martin went on to join the rowdy "Fraternity of Sireniacal Gentlemen," a drinking club that met monthly at the Mermaid Tavern and included playwrights and poets such as Ben Jonson and John Donne, John Fletcher, and Francis Beaumont. Later, Davies went on to become speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and Martin served as lawyer to the Virginia Company.
Many of the Inns of Court documented this kind of bad behavior occurring around revels connected to holiday celebrations, and the inns dealt with the offenders in various ways. For other instances of wrong-doing, see Middle Temple Parliament Books for 1584-5 and 1613-14, Gray's Inn Pension Book, 1585-6, and Inner Temple Parliament Book, 1610-11, In 1608, according to that year's Lincoln's Inn Black Book 6 entry, the Masters of the Bench ordered that William Reyner be appointed as "guider and director of the Revells" in order that "better order maie bee herafter thein than hath been of late." Sokon to be encoded are excerpts from Hamon L'Estrange's "The Reign of King Charles: An History", and letters of Josephe Mede to Sir Martin Stuteville from 1628 describing Christmas-time debauchery and damage along Fleet Street and Ram Alley done by members of Inner Temple such that Sir Hugh Hamersley, the Mayor of London, complained to Sir Robert Heath, the Attorney-General and also a member of Inner Temple.
Sources and further reading: REED: Inns of Court "Drama, Entertainment, and Music"; entries for John Davies and Richard Martin in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the History of Parliament Online, and Middle Temple Online.