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legal and popular sense of the term. They occupying part of the Temple. The Temple are mere voluntary societies, self-constituted, property, having passed to the Crowa at the self-governed, and possessing by prescription dissolution of the religious houses by the right of investing their members with the Henry VIII. (1541), was, in 1609, declared privilege of audience in the courts of the the property of the corporations of the Inner Kingdom." (Neva Guide to the Bar, by A. M. and the Middle Temple. The origin of the and LL. B., p. 67) "The original institution societies of Lincoln'^ Inn and Gray's Inn was of the Inns of Court," says Lord Mansfield much the same, and subject to the same con in Hart's Case (i Doug. 353) "nowhere pre jecture. They, like the societies of the Tem cisely appears." The Magna Charta contains ple, took their present form in the time of a clause by which the Common Pleas were Edward III. fixed at Westminster instead of following the The first connected description of the Inns King's Court, and to this clause the coming of Court is given by Sir John Fortesque, of the professors of law to London, and the Chancellor of Henry VI. (1422-1461), who rise of the Inns of Court are attributed. Be spoke of them in his Panegyric of the Laws fore the time of King John the judges and of England. At that time the four great Inns lawyers had been for the most part in holy were fed by ten lesser Inns called the Inns of orders. In the same year the Magna Charta Chancery. It is said they were so called be was granted, the Church, by the fourth Coun cause in early times the clerks resided cil of Lateran (1216), forbade its clergy from therein, whose duty it was to copy the writs in the Chancery. These Inns of Chancery practising in secular courts, but it was not till the end of the reign of Henry III.! played an important part in the preparatory that ecclesiastics ceased to practise. The training of the students, but were at last en tirely absorbed by the greater Inns, and at place of the clergy was filled by "intro present have no independent existence. ducing laymen into the different com Fortesque has little to say of the studies panies or fellowships of learning connected pursued at the Inns, save of the attendance with the law." In this manner the societies on pleadings in the nearby King's Court. He of the Inns of Court are supposed to have remarks that the expenses of the Inns were originated. (G. Pitt-Lewis, K. C., History of great, and the members were mostly gentle the Temple). Though composed thereafter oi men of means, who kept remarkably good laymen, they kept in some relation with the order, their fear of expulsion from their Inn Church, and retained many ecclesiastical cus and separation from the fellowship of their toms. We find most of the societies housed own society being greater "than the fear of on what were once church lands. other criminals for prison and chains." The order of the Knights Templars was At this time the Inns of Court numbered dissolved by the Crown in 1313, and the about two hundred each, and the lesser Inns Temple lands came into the hands of the a hundred each. Fortesque records that the Knights of St. John, who, in 1346, leased education was very general, and extended to them to "certain lawyers." Both the Socie singing and dancing, and' to the Scriptures, ties of the Inner and the Middle Temple, so called because of the situation of the former and adds that the students lived in great con tent. just within the precincts of the old city, claim In the reign of Elizabeth, when Coke wrote to be the original society. It is possible that of them, the Inns of Court attained their both existed in 1346, for at the time of the greatest renown. Their material welfare lease by the Knights of St. John there is evi equalled their repute for learning. The Hall dence that another societv of lawyers were