Inns of Court

“ Commenced in 1780 as part of a great scheme of rebuilding the whole Inn in the Palladian style. The illustration shows the so-called ‘Pitt’ sundial.
Court delightful to the eye, and, contrasting with the warm reds of the other buildings in Lincoln’s Inn, convince one, if one needs convincing, that red-brick and Portland stone are the only materials suitable for London architecture.
In the Eastern wing of Stone Buildings is the Drill Hall of the Inns of Court Volunteers, and here are preserved various memorials of the many Volunteer Associations which have been connected with the Inns of Court. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Groups of attorneys from the countryside who are appearing in London courts during term-time and living in temporary lodgings start to form guild-like fellowships and buy property where they dine and reside together, called the Inns of Court. They begin to think of themselves as belonging to a profession, with a feeling of responsibility for training the novices who sat in court to learn court procedures and attorney techniques. They invited these students to supper at the Inns of Court for the purpose of arguing about the day's cases. ”

“ 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. ”

“ See the articles Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn.
Though these societies are no corporation, and have no judicial power over their members, they have certain orders among themselves, which have by consent the force of laws: for small offences, they are only excommoned, or not allowed to eat at the common table with the rest; and for greater offences they lose their chambers, and are expelled the college, after which they are not to be received by any of the other three Inns of court. ”

“ As time went on, in fact, the Inns of Court gradually changed their character, and became a kind of aristocratic University, where many of the leading men in politics and literature received a general training and education. ”

“ A description of the structures and gardens belonging to these Inns we have given under their respective heads: but it may not be improper here to add, that strangers are apt to be disgusted at the nastiness of the walls, and the dirt and filth observable on all the stairs and public passages leading to the Inns of Court and Chancery: where every thing seems neglected, and generally out of repair: but on stepping into the chambers, one is surprised to see so remarkable a contrast ”

“ This feature of the Catalogue goes to establish the fact that the Inns of Court, whilst primarily "institutions set apart for the study and practice of the Law," have at all times kept up the character originally attributed to them as the resort also of students whose object was general culture as much as professional training [3] . ”

“ Nor is any barrister permitted to hold direct communication with his client; he must receive his instructions from a solicitor, who acts as an intermediary. “Youth eats his way to the bar.” This curious custom of ”eating dinners" is a survival of an old legal way of insisting that students should be resident at the Inns of Court. Before a man can be called to the bar, he must keep twelve terms, of which there are four each year. ”

“ 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 fact that members of the inns were held to be servants of the crown is still felt. It is an article of Magna Charta that justice shall not be sold, and a king’s servant could not receive payment for aiding a subject to secure the benefit of law. Even at the present day a barrister cannot recover by an action at law any fee to which he may be morally entitled. ”

“ Where would a man of taste chuse his town residence, setting convenience out of the question? Palace-yard,—for its contiguity to the Abbey, the Courts of Justice, the Sittings of Parliament, Whitehall, the Parks, &c.,—I hold of all places in these two great cities of London and Westminster to be the most classical and eligible. Next in classicality, I should name the four Inns of Court: they breathe a learned and collegiate air ”

“ 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. ”

“ In olden time they were less powerful and rapacious. But prosperity soon exaggerated all their evil qualities. Sketching the rise of the profession, the author observes—"These men would get sometimes Parents, Friends, Brothers, Neighbors, sometimes others to be (in their absence) Agents, Factors, or Solicitors for them at Westminster, and as yet they had no stately houses or mansions to live in, as they have now (called Inns of Court) , but they lodged like countrymen or strangers in ordinary Inns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the site of the modern Law Courts—that Gothic pile which we can never wholly see, and in which Street just failed to design a truly complete, effective, and absolute building, and failed entirely to produce a building practically suited for its purpose—was known then as Fitchett’s Field. The scene of the labours of the Lawyers, who have succeeded to their inheritance, was once the tilting-ground of the Knights Templars. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When they ceased to be ecclesiastics, and fixed themselves in the hospices which soon after the reception of the gowned tenants, were styled Inns of Courts; our lawyers took unto themselves wives, who were both fair and discreet. And having so made women flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, they brought them to homes within the immediate vicinity of their collegiate walls, and sometimes within the walls themselves. Those who would appreciate the life of the Inns in past centuries, and indeed in times within the memory of living men, should bear this in mind. ”