INNS OF COURT AND INNS OF CHANCERY.

Schools for the study of the Common Law, existed within the bounds of the city of London, at the commencement of the thirteenth century. No sooner had a permanent home been assigned to the Court of Common Pleas, than legal practitioners fixed themselves in the neighborhood of Westminster, or within the walls of London. A legal society speedily grew up in the city; and some of the older and more learned professors of the Common Law, devoting a portion of their time and energies to the labors of instruction, opened academies for the reception of students. Dugdale notices a tradition that in ancient times a law-school, called Johnson's Inn, stood in Dowgate, that another existed in Pewter Lane, and that Paternoster Row contained a third; and it is generally thought that these three inns were amongst the academies which sprung up as soon as the Common Pleas obtained a permanent abode.

The schools thus established in the opening years of the thirteenth century, were not allowed to flourish for any great length of time; for in the nineteenth year of his reign, Henry III. suppressed them by a mandate addressed to the mayor and sheriffs of the city. But though this king broke up the schools, the scholars persevered in their study; and if the king's mandate aimed at a complete discontinuance of legal instruction, his policy was signally defeated.

Successive writers have credited Edward III.'s reign with the establishment of Inns of Court; and it has been erroneously inferred that the study of the Common Law not only languished, but was altogether extinct during the period of nearly one hundred years that intervened between Henry III.'s dissolution of the city schools and Edward III.'s accession. Abundant evidence, however, exists that this was not the case. Edward I., in the twentieth year of his reign, ordered his judges of the Common Pleas to "provide and ordain, from every county, certain attorneys and lawyers" (in the original "atturnatus et apprenticiis") "of the best and most apt for their learning and skill, who might do service to his court and people; and those so chosen, and no other should follow his court, and transact affairs therein; the words of which order make it clear that the country contained a considerable body of persons who devoted themselves to the study and practice of the law." So also in the Year-book, 1 Ed. III., the words, "et puis une apprentise demand," show that lawyers holding legal degrees existed in the very first year of Edward III.'s reign; a fact which justifies the inference that in the previous reign England contained Common Law schools capable of granting the legal degree of apprentice. Again Dugdale remarks, "In 20 Ed. III., in a quod ei deforciat to an exception taken, it was answered by Sir Richard de Willoughby (then a learned justice of the Common Pleas) and William Skipwith, (afterwards also one of the justices of that court), that the same was no exception amongst the Apprentices in Hostells or Inns." Whence it is manifest that Inns of Court were institutions in full vigor at the time when they have been sometimes represented as originally established.

But after their expulsion from the city, there is reason to think that the common lawyers made no attempt to reside in colleges within its boundaries. They preferred to establish themselves on spots where they could enjoy pure air and rural quietude, could surround themselves with trees and lawns, or refresh their eyes with the sight of the silver Thames. In the earliest part of the fourteenth century, they took possession of a great palace that stood on the western outskirt of the town, and looked westwards upon green fields, whilst its eastern wall abutted on New Street—a thoroughfare that was subsequently called Chancellor's Lane, and has for many years been known as Chancery Lane. This palace had been the residence of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, who conferred upon the building the name which it still bears. The earl died in 1310, some seventeen years before Edward III.'s accession; and Thynne, the antiquary, was of opinion that no considerable period intervened between Henry Lacy's death and the entry of the lawyers. In the same century, the lawyers took possession of the Temple. The exact date of their entry is unknown; but Chaucer's verse enables the student to fix, with sufficient preciseness, the period when the more noble apprentices of the law first occupied the Temple as tenants of the Knight's Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who obtained a grant of the place from Edward III.[21] The absence of fuller particulars concerning the early history of the legal Templars, is ordinarily and with good reason attributed to Wat Tyler's rebels, who destroyed the records of the fraternity by fire. From roof to basement, beginning with the tiles, and working downwards, the mob destroyed the principal houses of the college; and when they had burnt all the archives on which they could lay hands, they went off and expended their remaining fury on other buildings, of which the Knights of St. John were proprietors.

The same men who saw the lawyers take possession of the Temple on the northern banks of the Thames, and of the Earl of Lincoln's palace in New Street, saw them also make a third grand settlement. The manor of Portepoole, or Purpoole, became the property of the Grays of Wilton, in the twenty-second year of Edward I.; and on its green fields, lying north of Holborn, a society of lawyers established a college which still retains the name of the ancient proprietors of the soil. Concerning the exact date of its institution, the uncertainty is even greater than that which obscures the foundation of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn; but antiquaries have agreed to assign the creation of Gray's Inn, as an hospicium for the entertainment of lawyers, to the time of Edward III.

The date at which the Temple lawyers split up into two separate societies, is also unknown; but assigning the division to some period posterior to Wat Tyler's insurrection, Dugdale says, "But, notwithstanding, this spoil by the rebels, those students so increased here, that at length they divided themselves into two bodies; the one commonly known by the Society of the Inner Temple, and the other of the Middle Temple, holding this mansion as tenants." But as both societies had a common origin in the migration of lawyers from Thavies Inn, Holborn, in the time of Edward III., it is usual to speak of the two Temples as instituted in that reign, and to regard all four Inns of Court as the work of the fourteenth century.

The Inns of Chancery for many generations maintained towards the Inns of Court a position similar to that which Eton School maintains towards King's at Cambridge, or that which Winchester School holds to New College at Oxford. They were seminaries in which lads underwent preparation for the superior discipline and greater freedom of the four colleges. Each Inn of Court had its own Inns of Chancery, yearly receiving from them the pupils who had qualified themselves for promotion to the status of Inns-of-Court men. In course of time, students after receiving the preliminary education in an Inn of Chancery were permitted to enter an Inn of Court on which their Inn of Chancery was not dependent; but at every Inn of Court higher admission fees were charged to students coming from Inns of Chancery over which it had no control, than to students who came from its own primary schools. If the reader bears in mind the difference in respect to age, learning, and privileges between our modern public schoolboys and university undergraduates, he will realize with sufficient nearness to truth the differences which existed between the Inns of Chancery students and the Inns of Court students in the fifteenth century; and in the students, utter-barristers, and benchers of the Inns of Court at the same period he may see three distinct orders of academic persons closely resembling the undergraduates, bachelors of arts, and masters of arts in our universities.

In the 'De Laudibus Legum AngliÆ,'[22] written in the latter part of the fifteenth century, Sir John Fortescue says—"But to the intent, most excellent Prince, yee may conceive a forme and an image of this study, as I am able, I wil describe it unto you. For there be in it ten lesser houses or innes, and sometimes moe, which are called Innes of the Chauncerye. And to every one of them belongeth an hundred students at least, and to some of them a much greater number, though they be not ever all together in the same."

In Charles II.'s time there were eight Inns of Chancery; and of them three were subsidiary to the Inner Temple—viz., Clifford's Inn, Clement's Inn, and Lyon's Inn. Clifford's Inn (originally the town residence of the Barons Clifford) was first inhabited by law-students in the eighteenth year of Edward III. Clement's Inn (taking its name from the adjacent St. Clement's Well) was certainly inhabited by law-students as early as the nineteenth year of Edward IV. Lyon's Inn was an Inn of Chancery in the time of Henry V.

One alone (New Inn) was attached to the Middle Temple. In the previous century, the Middle Temple had possessed another Inn of Chancery called Strand Inn; but in the third year of Edward VI. this nursery was pulled down by the Duke of Somerset, who required the ground on which it stood for the site of Somerset House.

Lincoln's Inn had for dependent schools Furnival's Inn and Thavies Inn—the latter of which hostels was inhabited by law-students in Edward III.'s time. Of Furnival's Inn (originally Lord Furnival's town mansion, and converted into a law-school in Edward VI.'s reign) Dugdale says: "After which time the Principall and Fellows of this Inne have paid to the society of Lincoln's Inne the rent of iii^l vi^s iii^d as an yearly rent for the same, as may appear by the accompts of that house; and by speciall order there made, have had these following priviledges: first (viz. 10 Eliz.), that the utter-barristers of Furnivall's Inne, of a yeares continuance, and so certified and allowed by the Benchers of Lincoln's Inne, shall pay no more than four marks apiece for their admittance into that society. Next (viz. in Eliz.) that every fellow of this inne, who hath been allowed an utter-barrister here, and that hath mooted here two vacations at the Utter Bar, shall pay no more for their admission into the Society of Lincoln's Inne, than xiii^s iiii^d, though all utter-barristers of any other Inne of Chancery (excepting Thavyes Inne) should pay xx^s, and that every inner-barrister of this house, who hath mooted here one vacation at the Inner Bar, should pay for his admission into this House but xx^s, those of other houses (excepting Thavyes Inne) paying xxvi^s viii^d."

The subordinate seminaries of Gray's Inn, in Dugdale's time, were Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn. Originally the Exchange of the London woolen merchants, Staple Inn was a law-school as early as Henry V.'s time. It is probable that Bernard's Inn became an academy for law-students in the reign of Henry VI.

[21] Chaucer mentions the Temple thus:—

"A manciple there was of the Temple,
Of which all catours might take ensemple
For to be wise in buying of vitaile;
For whether he pay'd or took by taile,
Algate he wayted so in his ashate,
That he was aye before in good estate.
Now is not that of God a full faire grace,
That such a leude man's wit shall pace
The wisdome of an heape of learned men?
Of masters had he more than thrice ten,
That were of law expert and curious,
Of which there was a dozen in that house,
Worthy to been stewards of rent and land
Of any lord that is in England;
To maken him live by his proper good
In honour debtless, but if he were wood;
Or live as scarcely as him list desire,
And able to helpen all a shire,
In any case that might have fallen or hap,
And yet the manciple set all her capp."[22] The 'De Laudibus' was written in Latin; but for the convenience of readers not familiar with that classic tongue, the quotations from the treatise are given from Robert Mulcaster's English version.