Inn of Court

“ The clock had not struck nine when they passed through the spacious area of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the trees in which had already become leafless, and gave an air of desolation to the dingy scenery. What a crowd of reflections do our Inns of Court give rise to—and yet how few who pass through them ever bestow one thought on the thousands who are toiling daily, and many nightly, within those walls to render perfect and secure for others the property which without the aid of the law would be unsafe! ”

“ Inns of Court, are four voluntary societies—Lincoln's Inn, the Inner and the Middle Temple, and Gray's Inn—with whom rests the exclusive right to call men to the English bar; they provide lectures and hold examinations in law, and they have discretionary powers to refuse admission to the bar or to expel and disqualify persons of unsuitable character from it; each Inn possesses considerable property, a dining hall, library, and chapel, and is subject to the jurisdiction of an irresponsible, self-elective body of Benchers, who are usually judges or senior counsel ”

“ Some are shams, shabby, and stucco; two, even five, porticos would be insignificant beside one real portico, such as that which graces the front of Court Royal. The pillars are of granite, red granite from Exmoor. When your eyes rest on the mansion you will feel at once the temerity of drawing comparisons between it and—and—an inn. ”

“ Such, in brief outline, is the history of the Four Inns of Court, in which is vested the monopoly of calling to the Bar of England such students as have kept terms at the Inn, and have commended{164} themselves to the approval of the Benchers. Starting as independent voluntary associations of students and practisers of the law, either in connection with the Court of some great Justiciar, or merely in hostels, where the apprentices might find board and lodging during their years of learning, they developed into Societies, nobly housed, which controlled their students after a collegiate fashion. ”

“ And for the help of young students in every of the inns of Chancery, they do likewise choose out of every one inn of court a reader, being no bencher, but an utter barrister there, of ten or twelve years’ continuance, and of good profit in study. ”

“ In recent years many of the brightest ornaments of the English Bar have had Chambers in Brick Court, including Lord Coleridge, Lord Bowen, Lord Russell, and Sir William Anson. There is a sundial in this Court—one of the many for which the Inn is famous—from which Goldsmith may often have taken the hour. It warns us that Time and Tide tarry for no man, and took the place (1704) of one that bore the motto, ‘Begone about your business,’ of which the story goes that it was a Bencher’s curt dismissal of a Mason who asked him for the motto to be engraved thereon. ”

“ Perhaps the Inns of Court may still shelter a few married ladies, who either from love of old-world ways, or from stern necessity, consent to dwell in their husbands' chambers. If such ladies can at the present time be found, the writer of this page would look for them in Gray's Inn—that straggling caravansary for the reception of money-lenders, Bohemians, and eccentric gentlemen—rather than in the other three Inns of Court, which have undoubtedly quite lost their old population of lady-residents. ”

“ Here all the Judges, as having been Serjeants-at-Law before their elevation to the Bench, had chambers assigned to them.
A plain, unpleasing, stuccoed, Early Victorian building now faces Chancery Lane, and drops as a screen of ugliness across the old brick buildings within. This we owe to Sir Robert Smirke, who rebuilt the Inn (1837-1838) , with the exception of the old Hall, which was ‘approached by a handsome flight of stone steps and balustrade.’ So Herbert, who says that in his day (1804) all the buildings were modern. ”

“ The enclosing of the{124} Fields with buildings caused much heart-burning among the Benchers and Students of Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1641 the Society presented a petition to Parliament, complaining of the great increase of buildings in their neighbourhood, and ‘the loss of fresh air which the petitioners formerly enjoyed.’ But Parliament turned a deaf ear to the stifling Lawyers, and the building went on unchecked. ”

“ Innkeepers are also prohibited by statute, in some jurisdictions, to entertain on the Lord's day, persons, not lodgers in the inn, if resident in the town where the inn is kept, and an indictment founded on that statute was held to be bad, because it did not aver that the persons entertained were not lodgers, as it is clear that that circumstance was an ingredient of the offence. ”

“ The men famous in Law, in Letters, and in Politics, who have been members of Lincoln’s Inn, are too numerous to mention. Of lawyers, besides Lord Brougham, there are Murray, Lord Mansfield, Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Bathurst, and Lord Campbell. ”

“ Beyond South Square stretches a delightful quadrangle of homogeneous houses, which contains a large gravelled centre, bordered by a few sickly plane-trees. This is Gray’s Inn Square, which, as we have seen, took the place of Coney Court and Chapel Court. It was at No. 1, Coney Court, burnt down in 1678, that Bacon, ‘the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,’ is said to have lived. The site of his rooms is covered now by No. 1,{156} Gray’s Inn Square, part of the row of buildings erected in 1868 at the West end of this Court. ”

“ Francis Bacon, in the dedication quoted below, describes Gray’s Inn as ‘the place whence my father was called to the highest place of justice, and where myself have lived and had my proceedings, and therefore few men are so bound to their Societies by obligation both ancestral and personal as I am to yours.’ An Order in the following year, 1577, directed that all the sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon should be ‘of the Grand Company and not be bound to any vacations.’ In the{157} twenty-eighth year of Elizabeth, Francis Bacon was advanced to the Readers’ Table. ”

“ For heaven’s sake don’t liken a ducal mansion to—to—an—an inn, however respectable and old established. It is possible that the Royal Hotel may have a portico——'
‘It has two,’ said Joan, eager for the credit of the Plymouth house. ‘Has this place got two? I only see one in the picture.’
Mr. Worthivale was silenced; he coloured, and looked down on the rug, frowning. Court Royal had but one portico. Presently he said in an embarrassed tone, ‘It may be true—I do not dispute it—that the inn in question has two porticos. But there is a difference, my girl, between porticos. ”

“ The roof is elaborately carved, and ornamented with colour and gilt. The windows are rich in stained glass; the royal arms figure in the centre of the beautiful south window, the others are filled with old glass. In some directions, it must be confessed, the decoration is a trifle overdone, especially the heraldic decoration. The arms of the Inn, fifteen fers de moline on a blue ground, with the shield of Lacy ‘or, a lion rampant purpure,’ are repeated with bewildering frequency in every material.
Above the daïs is the great fresco ‘School of Legislation’ (1852) . ”

“ It is somewhat outside the scope of this book to deal with the dwellers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but mention may be made of Thomas Campbell, the poet, who had chambers at No. 61, whilst No. 58 was the House of Forster, the biographer of Dickens, which is described in ‘Bleak House’: ‘Formerly a house of State ... in these shrunken fragments of its greatness lawyers lie, like maggots in nuts.’
More fascinating than all is that ‘Old Curiosity Shop’ which still survives upon a tiny triangular plot amidst the ruin of tenements that have been lately razed to the ground. ”

“ It was apparently in connection with this play that Bacon, being then Reader of Gray’s Inn, wrote to Lord Burleigh as follows: ‘There are a dozen gentlemen of Gray’s Inn that, out of the honour which they bear to your Lordship and my Lord Chamberlain, to whom at their last masque they were so much bounden, are ready to furnish a masque: wishing it were in their power to perform it according to their minds.’ [65]
The Benchers and Students of Gray’s Inn indulged in the Christmas Saturnalia of Masques and Revels with as great, or even greater, zest than the other Societies of Lawyers. ”

“ The earliest mention of an Inn for housing apprentices of the Law occurs in 1344, in a demise from the Lady Clifford of the house near Fleet Street, called Clifford’s Inn, to the apprenticiis de banco, the lawyers belonging to the Court of Common Pleas. And Thavie’s Inn was similarly leased from one John Thavie, ‘a worthy citizen and armourer,’ of London, who died in 1348. ”

“ Raymond Buildings end in Field Court, which in turn adjoins South Square. One side of Field Court is formed by the iron railings and fine iron Gateway (1723) which terminate the Gardens. Square stone gate-posts carry the Griffin of the Inn. For the device of{160} Gray’s Inn is a Griffin, or, in a field sable. Within this Gate a broad avenue of plane-trees, flanked by grassy lawns and terraces, leads to a green earth-work terrace at the northern end of the gardens. ”

“ Lawyers less quarter give;
The first won't eat you till you're slain,
The last will do't alive."
This inn, like all the other inns of court, is of great antiquity. Dugdale states it to have been an inn of Chancery in the reign of Edward II. Some have conjectured, according to Mr. Moser, "that near this spot stood an inn, as far back as the time of King Ethelred, for the reception of penitents who came to St. Clement's Well; that a religious house was in process of time established, and that the church rose in consequence." ”

“ Contra, if goods left there by a man, because the innkeeper hath no advantage by them.' York v. Grenaugh, 2 Ld. R. 868.
'So where one leaves his horse at an inn, to stand there by agreement at livery, although neither himself nor any of his servants lodge there, he is requted a guest for that purpose, and the innkeeper hath a valuable consideration, and if that horse be stolen, he hath an action upon the common custom of the realm. ”

“ The north wing, upon the site of No. 2, Tanfield Court, was opened in 1882. A case containing a collection of ‘Serjeants’ Rings’ is of some interest. In the anteroom to the Parliament Chambers hangs a portrait of William Petyt, a former Treasurer of the House and Keeper of the Records at the Tower, who bequeathed his exceedingly valuable collection of historical documents, etc., to the Inn. ”

“ And it is not necessary to stretch one’s credulity so far. There are indications—faint, it is true, but still indications—of the existence of two Societies of Lawyers settled here on two parcels of land that once belonged to the Knights Templars, and dating from almost the earliest days after Edward’s confiscation.
For, according to Dugdale, who repeats a tradition which is probably correct, the Knights Hospitallers leased the property soon after they had acquired it to ‘divers apprentices of the Law that came from Thavie’s Inn in Holborn’ at an annual rental of £10. ”

“ Comparing the three quarters preceding with three quarters subsequent to the establishment of these Courts, there was a decrease of nearly 10,000 writs issued by the Court of Queen’s Bench alone, or of nearly 12,500 on the year.”
We soon arrived at the County Court. It is a plain, substantial looking building, wholly without pretension, but at the same time not devoid of some little architectural elegance of exterior. We entered, by a gateway far less austere than that of Gray’s Inn, a long, well-lighted passage, on either side of which were offices connected with the Court. ”

“ Furnival’s Inn was not a cheerful place to starve in. There was an atmosphere of gloom and decay about it, which derived, no doubt, from its former dealings in Chancery. In the days of its prosperity it had fed the Inns of Court, as Winchester feeds New College ”

“ The Chapel was needlessly enlarged. The buttresses{115} were stuccoed. The beautiful proportions, which Inigo Jones, like all the truly great architects, knew how to impart to his buildings, were wantonly and inexcusably destroyed.
John Donne had entered as a law student at Lincoln’s Inn, and, after taking Orders, he was appointed preacher to the Inn. Before this, when Secretary to Lord Keeper Egerton, he had been secretly married to Anne, Lady Egerton’s niece. Ruin stared him in the face when, on discovery of the marriage, he was dismissed. ”

“ Of the Templars’ Treasure House nothing now remains, but the Treasurer survives, one of the chief officials of the Inn, whose duties correspond roughly to those of a Bursar of an Oxford College.
The laying up of treasure upon earth is always apt to provoke the predatory instinct, even in the breast of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to the motive of greed was added, in the case of the Templars, the unanswerable charge that they had done nothing for many years to redeem their vows to succour Jerusalem or protect pilgrims. ”

“ In Elizabeth’s reign it was ordered that ‘none should be admitted of the Society, except he were of good parentage and not of ill-behaviour.’ Such another Inner Temple family was that of the Hares, who lived for generations in Hare Court, the south side of which was built by Nicholas Hare about 1570. Hare Court, together with the rooms once occupied by Chief Justice Jeffreys, has been recently rebuilt. A doubtful portrait of that ferocious Judge by Sir Peter Lely was presented to the Inn by Sir Harry Poland, K.C.
The exterior of the Library Building is not imposing. ”