And now, since we have drifted again from law to poetry, mention must be made of two other poets whose names are connected with the Inner Temple. About the year 1755 William Cowper left his lodging in the Middle Temple, and took Chambers in the Inner, remaining there till his removal to the Asylum ten years later. That was nearly three hundred years after the Father of English poetry is said to have lived here. For, if we could believe the life of Chaucer prefixed to the Black Letter Folio of 1598, both he and Gower, the poet, were members of the Inner Temple. ‘For not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house, where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street.’ Master Buckley was Chief Butler of the Inner Temple (1564), and as such performed the functions of Librarian. He may, therefore, quite well have seen a record to this effect. But there is no reason to identify this Chaucer with the poet. CHAPTER VI LINCOLN’S INN AND THE DEVIL’S OWN It was probably the removal of the Knights Templars to the New Temple that gave rise to the construction of New Street. Some thoroughfare connecting their old property in Holborn with their new premises and the river was necessary to their convenience and their trade. Thus, probably through their instrumentality, New Street, or, as we now call it, Chancery Lane, came into existence, and, connecting two of the main arteries leading from the western suburbs into the City, and cutting through the very heart of the area occupied by the Inns of Court, it soon developed into what Leigh Hunt described as ‘the greatest legal thoroughfare in England.’[48] Chancery Lane, or Chancellor’s Lane, as the name appears in its earlier form, is said to have been called after a Bishop of Chichester, who was Chancellor of England at the end of the thirteenth century. A house and garden, near the southern end of Chancery Lane, was, we know, the town residence of the Bishops of Chichester. Here dwelt St. Richard, Bishop of Chichester (1245-1253), ‘in true possession thereof in right of his Church of Chichester.’ The name of Chichester Rents perpetuated the memory of this episcopal habitation. Possession of this town residence of the Bishops of Chichester was finally acquired by the lawyers about the middle of the sixteenth century. A few years later (1580) they obtained the freehold of the open space known as Coney Garth, or Cotterell’s Garden. But it is not at all clear how the Society of Lincoln’s Inn came into occupation of these premises, or how its name had come to be attached to property properly belonging to the See of Chichester and St. Giles’s Hospital. In the absence of any other obvious explanation, we must look back for the origin of the Society of Lincoln’s Inn to a group of lawyers housed in an Inn belonging to the Earl of Lincoln, and must try to account for their presence on their present property by the theory of a migration