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. This must have been before 1348. For in that year died John Thavye, who bequeathed this Inn to his wife, and described it in his will as one ‘in which certain apprentices of the Law _used_ to reside’ (_solebant_). But there is also evidence of another and earlier settlement of lawyers on this property. Some lawyers, it is recorded, ‘made a composition with the Earl of Lancaster for a lodging in the Temple, and so came thither and have continued ever since.’[14] The Earl of Lancaster, as we have seen above, held the Temple _c._ 1315-1322. Here, then, we have indications of two Societies of Lawyers settling in the Temple. The first body, holding from the Earl of Lancaster, may reasonably be supposed to have had their grant confirmed by the owners who succeeded him. The Society of the Middle Temple must be considered the successors of those tenants. And this Society Mr. Pitt Lewis, K.C.,[15] has traced to a former home in St. George’s Inn, a students’ hostel mentioned by Stow. The second body, migrating from Thavye’s Inn, obtained a lease of the part not occupied by the former, at an annual rental of £10, as Dugdale states. And from them are descended the Inner Templars of to-day. From the time when the Order of the Knights Hospitallers was dissolved, till 1608, these two Societies held these two separate parcels of land direct of the Crown by lease, paying two separate rents. Then they discovered that James I. was beginning to negotiate a sale of the freehold. The present of a ‘stately cup of pure gold, filled with gold pieces,’ presented by the two Societies, converted the Scholar-Monarch. On August 13, 1608, he granted a Charter to the Treasurers and Benchers of the Inner and Middle Temple, conferring upon them the freehold of the Temple, together with the Church, ‘for the hospitation and education of the Professors and Students of the Laws of this Realm,’ subject to a rent charge of £10, payable by each of the two Societies. In 1673 these rents were extinguished by purchase by the two Societies.