London (England) -- Antiquities; London (England) -- History
Clement's Inn, an Inn of Chancery attached to the Inner Temple, was
divided within recent years from New Inn, which belonged to the Middle
Temple, only by iron railings with a gate. Its origin is unknown, but
its name connects it either with St. Clement's Church, or St. Clement's
Well. It was certainly in existence before the time of Henry VII.
_Lyon's Inn_ is said to have been an Inn of Chancery in the time of
Henry V., but the evidence on this point is uncertain. It was situated
in Newcastle Street, Strand, and was attached to the Inner Temple, who
bought it in 1581. The Aldwych improvements have wiped out the Globe
Theatre which had succeeded it.
Besides the Inns of Court and Chancery, there existed also Inns for
Judges and Serjeants, of which the most important were Scrope's Inn,
opposite to St. Andrew's Church, in Holborn, and the two Serjeants' Inns
in Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, which, however, cannot be treated of
here.
Documents of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries make it quite clear
that Staple Inn, Furnival's Inn, Brooke House, and, of course, the old
Inn of the Earl of Lincoln, in Shoe Lane, were all within the city
boundaries. It was not until December, 1645, that the House of Lords
passed a resolution that the Inns of Court were to form a province by
themselves,[153] and the resolution was interpreted to cover also their
Inns of Chancery dependencies, so that Furnival's Inn and Staple Inn
became cut off from the city, and all the Inns became extra-parochial.
It will have been noticed that the properties of the Inns of Court, and
most of the Inns of Chancery, came to be held directly of the King. The
legal artifice of feoffment to "uses" was adopted in regard to most of
these properties; but though the feoffees were chiefly legal persons,
they did not apparently always represent the societies; nor is it quite
clear whom they did represent; but the societies had no security of
tenure until they purchased their respective properties.
[Illustration: LINCOLN'S INN HALL: THE LORD CHANCELLOR'S COURT.
_From a drawing by T. H. Shepherd._]
It has been shown that the deep hollow, at the bottom of which flowed
the stream of Holborn, formed a natural barrier between the walled city
and its suburb. It also divided the guilds and trade associations of
London from that plexus of schools of laws which at first radiated from
Holborn Bars. The guilds recognised the leading of the Mayor and
Commonalty; the schools of law looked for direction chiefly to the law
officers of the Crown. In Florence, and other cities of the Middle Ages,
the associations of judges, attorneys, and wool-merchant lawyers were as
much a part of civic and communal life as any other guild; the different
conditions which existed in England led to different consequences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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