Legal London in 1900: The Inns of Court

Imperial London, by Arthur Henry Beavan, first published in 1901, had this to say about the Inns of Court:

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In the fifteenth century while the rose of Lancaster was flouting with deadly earnestness her pale sister of York, there flourished no fewer than fourteen "Hostels," or Inns, for the rearing of lawyers; and so popular were they that the number of their students, or "apprentices," bore quite a formidable proportion to the population of London.

Ten of the seminaries, called Inns of Chancery, were offshoots from the four parent societies known as Inns of Court: the Temple, Inner and Middle, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn.

The Chancery Inns by their moderate fees attracted the mercantile and middle classes, and the Inns of Court were patronized almost entirely by the aristocracy, from whom heavier annual payments were exacted.

Originally, the constitution of the Inns was semi-monastic; not only did the governors of the Inns look after the spiritual and bodily welfare of the students, but the Star Chamber condescended to take interest in their morals, and decreed, that, without special leave, they should never be out of their quarters at the Inns, after six o'clock, and, to check their notorious combativeness, issued an edict prohibiting the wearing of any kind of weapon.

With the Reformation came great changes.

The Inns were less and less associated with clerical establishments, and finally became altogether secularized, the official costume of Judges and barristers, and the "coif," or circular black patch on the top of the serjeants' wigs, which recalls the tonsure, being the sole reminder that lawyers were originally brought up and nurtured in the bosom of Mother Church.

These Inns of Court are strange survivals of the jealously­guarded guilds of the Middle Ages, as they had been allowed to retain, up to the twentieth century, the sole privilege of deciding who may, and who may not, become barristers, and under what conditions they may exercise their profession.

They were, practically, the oldest Trades Unions in existence.

Each society was governed by a self-elected committee, generally K.C.'s, called Benchers, whose powers were far-reaching.

To every Inn was attached a chapel, a library, a suite of apartments reserved for the Benchers, and, most important of all, a Hall, where students used to become duly qualified as learned counsellors, and "called" to the Bar, by the simple process of eating a certain number of dinners, by 1900 superseded by the more arduous one of searching examinations.

So much for some of the history relating to the Inns of Court.

But much human interest is attached to them, and romance vivifies their dry bones.

With the creations of Thackeray and Dickens associated with the Inns professionally, or as occupants of chambers, I have dealt separately, because they somehow seem so real as to get mixed up with celebrities who actually dwelt there.

Thus Francis Bacon, the Treasurer of Gray's Inn, 1600, is apt to be a much less realizable personality than Mr. John Westlock of the Temple, who courted Ruth Pinch in Fountain Court.

Yet every part of the old Inns speaks of a famous past, and of names which live in history.

Amongst other notables of Lincoln's Inn, one thinks of Sir Thomas More, once a member of the Society; Lenthall, the famous speaker of the House of Commons in Charles I and Cromwell's time; Lords Mansfield, Ellenborough, and Brougham.

In chambers in the Inner Temple lived Dr Johnson, and Cowper the poet.

Charles Lamb was born there; and the Society's members included Nicholas Hare, Queen Mary's Master of the Rolls (hence Hare Court), Coke and Littleton - names of dread to later students of the law - the learned Selden, Sir Christopher Hatton, Judge Jeffreys, Sir William Follett, Heneage Finch, Sir Matthew Hale, etc.

The Middle Temple has a noble roll of past members: Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Thomas Overbury; John Ford the dramatist, Congreve and Wycherley, Southerne and Shadwell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Edmund Burke, Plowden the jurist, Sir William Blackstone - to students even a greater terror than Coke and Littleton - Lords Ashburton, Eldon, and Stowell, etc.

Goldsmith lived and died in Brick Court.

At Gray's Inn Francis Bacon was admitted, and there laboured for some years in obscurity; Bradshaw, the Judge at King Charles I's trial, was a Bencher, and Lord Romilly and the poet Southey were both members.

Clifford's, like the Inner Temple Inn, recalls Sir Edmund Coke and Selden; and Harrison the regicide, though not of this legal and noble company, was connected with Clifford's as a lawyer's clerk.

At New Inn Sir Thomas More studied before entering at Lincoln's Inn; while at Staple Inn once resided Dr. Johnson.

I have given but a homeopathic dose of departed celebrities; yet a little research will help any one to recall multitudes - not all of whom were wise; many, very foolish; yet few, commonplace - who, in one capacity or another, occupied chambers in the Inns of Court.

In the Temple, however, the memory of Charles Lamb has been unconsciously immortalized by himself.

His gentle nature would rejoice if he could see the rapture of the waifs and strays from Clare Market, Drury Lane, and other unsavoury districts, who at certain periods of the year are permitted by the thoughtful benchers to revel in the country sights and songs of birds that greet them in the gardens.

Kindliness has always been an attribute of Benchers, handed down as it were from one generation to another; perhaps, too, a long course of comfortable Inn dinners and sound old wines has something to do with it; or is it the result of the perfect freedom from the Sturm und Drang which they enjoy in their quiet retreat?

Be it what it may, to this day Lamb's apostrophe on the "Old Benchers of the Inner Temple" holds good.

"So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish! so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and chambers! so may sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walk! so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! so may the jounkers of this generation eye you pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised the parade before ye!"

Next: Legal London in 1900: Inns of Court: Lincoln's Inn Fields