Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/489

 10* s. i. MAY 2i, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

401

LONDON, SATURDAY. MAY 11, 190ft.

CONTENTS.-No. 21.

NOTES --Lincoln's Inn, 401 Proverbs in the Waverley Novels, 402- Substituted Portrait of Raleigh, 403 " Haklet " " Pontificate " Bell's ' Chaucer ' " Schlen- ter" 'The Scots Peerage,' 404 Aristotle and Moral Philosophy Hawker's ' Trelawny ' Anticipated Carter Braxton St. Paul's Quotation from Bpimenides, 405 Mother Shipton Phctbe Hessel, the Stepney Amazon- Sex before Birth, 406.

QUKRIBS:-"The glory of the Methodists "Jeremy Taylor Quotations North Devon May Day Custom, 406 Port Arthur Worm " Painted and popped" Lieut.-Col. Cross Building Customs and Folk-lore "Jenion's Intack" 'The Children of the Chapel' Wolverhampton Pulpit Gilbert, 407 Marlowe's Birth "En pentenne " Tiger-claw Weapon Lyon Family Tighern-mas - Catesby Arms on Sarpi's 'Council of Trent.' 408 Pre- scriptions French Poems Poems on Shakespeare "Luther's distich" The Poet Close The Syer-Cuming Collection Taylor the Platonist Watson of Hamburg, 409.

EBPLIBS :" Hanged, drawn, and quartered," 410 Mar- tello Towers, 411 'The Grenadier's Exercise of the Grenado ' " Kick the bucket "Cathedral High Stewards 'Athens; Cantabrigienses ' Speaker Smith, 412 Cold Harbour: Windy Arbour Walbeoff Family Kev. Arthur Galton, 413 Mark Hildesley Byard Family Miniature of Sir Isaac Newton Links with the Past, 414 Bishop Hinds St. Finaof Gimignano 17, Dean's Yard Shanks's Mare, 415 " Feed the brute " Wellington's Horses- Shakespeare's Grave Wilton Nunnery, 416 The Lobis- home Birch Family Nelson and Wolsey Dr. Alexander Garden, 417.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Stubbs's ' Lectures on European History' Collins's "Sir Thomas More's Utopia' Book- sellers"' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

LINCOLN'S INN.

A NOTEWORTHY contribution has recently been made by Mr. W. Paley Baildon, F.S.A., in vol. iv. of the Lincoln's Inn Records, known as the Black Books, of which he is the learned editor, to the old controversy as to whence the site now known as Lincoln's Inn derived its name.

It has been generally agreed by London topographers that the Society succeeded to the possession of the town house of Henry Lacy, last Earl of Lincoln, who died full of years and honours in the year 1311, and took their title from him.

But Mr. Baildon suggests that, though the latter statement is correct, the former is a mistake, and his theory, which is both ingenious and possible, and possesses, more- over, the somewhat uncommon merit of originality is briefly as follows.

1. It is certain that this nobleman owned considerable property in the immediate neighbourhood, including the Manor of Holborn, and that he did purchase the house of the Black Friars near the top of Chancery Lane, whence Stow and his successors sur- mised that Lincoln's Inn must be on the site of that house. This assumption, however, is

erroneous. The Earl's private mansion was not on the site of Lincoln's Inn, nor in Chancery Lane at all ; it stood at the north- east corner of Shoe Lane, close to St. Andrew's Church. In later times it passed to the Stanley family, and was identical with " Darby Howse in Showe Lane," as it was called on a document dated 1548 ; and it was not finally swept away until 1855.

2. The site of Lincoln's Inn, as we know it, was granted by King Henry III. in 1226 to Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester. He built a palace upon it, and died there in 1244. It was occupied by his successors in the see until the death of Bishop Reade in 1415.

3. In 1422 at which date the Black Books commence the Society of Lincoln's Inn are found in occupation of the bishops' property, paying rent for it to the see, and they con- tinued to pay rent until they purchased the freehold in 1580.

How then came it about that a society living on the property of the Bishops of Chichester was yet named after the Earl of Lincoln, and adopted his arms ?

Mr. Baildon finds a clue in a statement of Dugdale's :

" Of this Henry, Earl of Lincolne, is the tradition still current amongst the Antients here [i.e., at Lincoln's Inn] that he, about the beginning of King Edward the Second's time, being a person well affected to the knowledge of the Lawes, first brought in the professors of that honourable and necessary study, to settle in this place: but direct proof thereof from good authority, I have not as yet seen any."

It is clear that the tradition was inaccurate. The Earl certainly could not have "brought

in the professors to settle in this place,"

but it is quite possible that he might well have been the founder or patron of the Society in another place.

Now opposite his house in Shoe Lane there lived a body of lawyers and students in whom he took the deepest interest, and doubtless he proved himself a kind and munificent patron to his scholarly neighbours. We do not know what the name of this body was. What can be more probable than that out of gratitude they assumed the Earl's title and called themselves the Society of Lincoln's Innl

The Society flourished and outgrew the resources of their hospitium. What was to be done 1 Building was impossible, as their funds were insufficient, and, moreover, the dwelling in which they lived was not their own property. It belonged to one Thavie, an armourer, who died in 1348, and who, in his will, refers to "iliud hospitium in [quo] apprenticii habitare solebant." They must,