The Inn, which the Serjeants joined when they left Fleet Street, had been occupied by their brethren since the end of the fourteenth century. But, though leased to their representatives by the Bishops of Ely, who held the freehold, or their lessees, it was not called Serjeants’ Inn until 1484. Prior to that date it was known as Faryngdon’s Inn in Chancellor’s Lane. Here all the Judges, as having been Serjeants-at-Law before their elevation to the Bench, had chambers assigned to them. A plain, unpleasing, stuccoed, Early Victorian building now faces Chancery Lane, and drops as a screen of ugliness across the old brick buildings within. This we owe to Sir Robert Smirke, who rebuilt the Inn (1837-1838), with the exception of the old Hall, which was ‘approached by a handsome flight of stone steps and balustrade.’ So Herbert, who says that in his day (1804) all the buildings were modern. He describes the Inn as then consisting of two small Courts, the principal entrance from Chancery Lane fronting the Hall, and the second Court communicating with Clifford’s Inn by a small passage. As there is an exit from Clifford’s Inn to Fetter Lane, it is thus possible to pass from Chancery Lane to Fetter[82] Lane without going into Fleet Street. When, in 1877, the Brotherhood of Serjeants dissolved, they sold the Inn for some £60,000 to Serjeant Cox, and divided the proceeds, but gave the twenty-six valuable portraits of their predecessors, that had adorned the walls of the Hall, to the National Portrait Gallery. The tiny Hall, the single, narrow Court of plain stuccoed houses, and some trees and turf behind some railings, remain to remind us of the Serjeants’ Inn and the Serjeants’ Garden, where Lord Keeper Guildford would take his ease, and where the great roll of English Judges have had chambers. But the beautiful old stained glass windows of the Hall and Chapel, which bore the arms of the various members, together with the heraldic device of the Order--an ibis _proper_ on a shield _or_--were removed by the purchaser to his residence of Millhill, where he built a chamber, the facsimile of the Hall, for their reception. Such is the story of the Inns of Court, which have gone on from strength to strength, and of the Inns of Chancery and the Serjeants’ Inns, which have almost vanished, together with the Societies which made them famous, from off the changing face of London. It is a story which, though briefly told, and told by a layman who makes no claim to originality of material, can hardly fail to be of interest to those who are alive to the charm of the old things of the Capital.