It is indeed difficult to realize and remember how small London was, how comparatively tiny even the ‘Great Wen,’ which moved Cobbett’s wrath and disgust, and how recent is the growth of that continuous monotony of streets, which have spread over the fields where our grandfathers shot snipe and partridges. Even at the beginning of the last century Gray’s Inn was a ‘private place in the suburbs,’ suitable for study, removed from the bustle of the City. ‘The moment the sun peeps out,’ wrote Sir Samuel Romilly from his Chambers in 1780, ‘I am in the country, having only one row of houses between me and Highgate and Hampstead.’ There is a popular legend that Gray’s Inn derives its name from the Grey Friars, whose Church stood hard by. But this legend is not in any way supported by the probabilities. Gray’s Inn, in fact, was the Inn, _hospitium_, or dwelling-house of the Greys of Wilton. Its site was included in the Manor of Portpool, the name of which survives in Portpool Lane. The name of this Manor is derived from Port (= market or gate), and pool, just as in West Smithfield there was a pool called Horsepool.[59] The ‘market-pool’ in question may have been that in the northern Courtyard of Staple Inn, or somewhere else on the property of the De Greys. A very large portion of the Hundred of Ossulston, in which Gray’s Inn lies, appears to have belonged to the Bishop and Canons of St. Paul’s, and from the Manor of Portpool an ancient prebend of St. Paul’s Cathedral takes its name. The exact date when the De Greys first came into possession of the Manor of Portpool is not certain. But Reginald de Grey died in 1308, according to an Inquisition taken after his death at ‘Purtpole,’ seized of a messuage and certain lands there, which he held of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul, London, by rent, service, and suit. This Reginald de Grey was Justiciar of Chester, whose work would often bring him to the Capital. It is reasonable to suppose that his following of clerks and lawyers would, as in the case of the Earl of Lincoln, be resident in his London ‘Inn,’ and thus form the nucleus of what afterwards developed into a School, Guild, or Society of Lawyers. The Society of Gray’s Inn probably came into corporate existence some time in the fourteenth century. The exact date cannot, indeed, be determined. As in the case of the other Inns, the known surviving records are scanty. And this, perhaps, is due to the same cause. Fire wrought havoc in Gray’s Inn, as elsewhere, and the earliest archives of this Inn, as of the Temple, were probably destroyed at the end of the seventeenth century. In 1687 we learn that, ‘as they were in the midst of their revels and masquerades, a violent fire broke out, which destroyed most of the paper buildings that remained; several records are also lost and burnt or blown up.’