The Manor presently escheated to the King, and licence was granted to the previous tenants to alienate to the House of Jesus of Bethlehem at Shene (_i.e._, Richmond) in Surrey, both the Manor of Portepoole and the lands in the parish of St. Andrew of Holborn, and the advowson of the chantry pertaining thereto, to be held to the annual value of ten marks (£6 13s. 4d.). Then, in 1516, occurs the first distinct mention of a Society of Lawyers settled in these four messuages, with their gardens, windmill, and chapel. For an association consisting of two Serjeants and four Barristers, representatives of a Society of Students of Law, took out a lease in that year of the Manor of Portpool from the Prior and Convent of Shene at a rent of £6 13s. 4d. This lease was renewed, at the same rent, by Henry VIII. when, at the dissolution of the monasteries, the Inn, together with the whole of the Priory of Shene, passed into the hands of the Crown. The rent was commuted into a freehold by the Commissioners of the Commonwealth in 1651, upon payment of a heavy fine. It was resumed by Charles II., the sale being declared null and void, and was sold to Sir Philip Matthews. Gray’s Inn thenceforth paid the old rent to him and his heirs, until, in 1733, the Benchers bought the freehold of the property from them. It is now the absolute legal property of the Society of Gray’s Inn. By the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Gray’s Inn had risen into great popularity. The Inns of Court now formed one of the leading Universities of England--‘the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in the Kingdom,’ Ben Jonson declared. And chief among the Colleges of Law, with almost double the number of students in any other Inn, stood Gray’s Inn. The great Lord Burghley always refers to it with the deepest affection, mentioning it as ‘the place where myself came forthe unto service.’ Its popularity, however, can hardly have been due to the luxuriousness of its chambers, which, we are told, were ‘disagreeably incommodious.’ Dugdale remarks that there was ‘not much of beauty or uniformity’ in the buildings, ‘the structure of the more ancient having been not only very mean, but of so slender capacity that even the Ancients of this House were necessitated to lodge double’--as, for instance, in Henry VIII.’s day, Sir Thomas Nevile wrote to say that he would accept of Mr. Attorney-General to be his bedfellow in his Chamber there. In 1688, it appears, the Inn was divided into three Courts--Holborn, Coney, and Middle or Chapel Court. Coney and Chapel Courts were afterwards converted into Gray’s Inn Square--a title conferred upon them in 1793.