These are certain private unincorporated associations, in the na- ture of collegiate bouses, located in London, and invested with the exclusive privilege of calling men to the bar; that is, conferring the rank or degree of a barrister. They were founded probably about the beginning of the fourteenth century. The principal inns of court are the Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s lun. (The two former originally belonged to the Knights Templar; the two latter to the earls of Lincoln and Gray respectively.) These bodies now have a “common council of legal education,” for giving lectures and holding examinations. The inns of chancery, distinguishable from the foregoing, but generally classed with them under the general name, are the buildings known as “Clifford’s Inn,” “Clement’s Inn,” “New Inn,” “Staples’ Inn,” and “Barnard’s Inn.” They were formerly a sort of collegiate houses in which law students learned the elements of law before being admitted into the inns of court, but they have long ceased to occupy that po- sition.
