Map B: All Minor Legal Inns, 1350-1425

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This period witnessed a strong growth in the number, size, organization, and probably quality of teaching at legal inns. Except for possibly Barnard’s Inn, all ten legal inns known to post-1500 history as the “Inns of Chancery” were established to some extent by the end of the period, although most were not yet formed as law societies. The map covers seventy-five years, so some inns inevitably disappeared or consolidated during this period. The most notable long-term change, besides the relocation of Lincoln’s Inn to the Bishop of Chichester’s Inn on Chancery Lane, is the addition of several legal inns on The Strand, most of which were to survive into modern times. Inns occupied in this period that were acknowledged after 1500 as one of the ten Inns of Chancery were Furnival’s Inn and Staple Inn, joining Thavies Inn in the same area on Holborn. The other inns were not yet formed as law societies. Some of these may have been managed by Chancery clerks (see the notes to Map D).

Legal Inns on Map B later one of the Inns of Chancery, post-1500

The point at which these inns became legal societies is not clear in any instance. Almost no  early records survive, none decisive. The following notes and the TIC generally follow Baker’s updated chronologies (IoC, pp. 14-51):

1. Clement’s Inn.
2. Barnard’s Inn. The messuages on the site were in the fourteenth century owned by the quarrelsome London citizen Roger Legat, while Chancery clerks leased the garden and adjacent buildings or were feoffees (Baker, IoC, p. 16 n. 8).
3. Furnival’s Inn . John Oselby, a married Chancery clerk, is recorded as being principal in 1407, the only documented connection between a Chancery clerk and one of the legal societies known after 1470s as the Inns of Chancery.
4. Lyon’s Inn.
5. New Inn. Originally St. Mary Inn, and re-built as New Inn, in Aldwych. It is also possible that the society was founded by members of St. George’s Inn and/or the Long Entry who migrated to St. Mary Inn when their former lodgings became dilapidated.
6. Staple Inn’s fine Elizabethan façade still graces Holborn today, although the actual legal inn and legal society are long gone. “Staple” here means “with pillars,” and has nothing to do with the wool staple.
7. Strand Inn.
8. The Outer or Utter Temple. It likely disappeared because it had no hall.

Other Legal Inns and Properties, 1350-1425

9. Angel Inn. Though sometimes listed as an Inn of Chancery in earlier scholarship, Baker has recently claimed that it was never a legal inn but a coaching inn adjacent to several real legal inns (IoC, p. 39).
10. Serjeant’s/Scarle’s/Farringdon’s Inn. This property was held discontinuously from 1378 by Chancery Masters Robert Muskham, John Scarle, and Robert Farringdon. Robert Farringdon (d. 1409) held several properties in the area, the only Chancery Master to have invested seriously or at least directly in local property. His legal inns appear to have been for senior attorneys only, especially Serjeants-at-Law, the highest-ranking barristers, and had little or no educational function. There was later a second Serjeant’s Inn nearby on Fleet Street (shown on the base map).
11. Farringdon’s Inn in Seacole Lane. (See above, no. 10).
12. Raton’s Row. Williams claimed that the Raton’s Row property, next to Staple Inn, when owned by Tamworth and his heirs, was a legal inn. It is probable that the property housed Chancery clerks and lawyers and their apprentices because it was just a few feet from Tamworth’s first and largest inn on Chancery Lane. Whatever role it played in legal education was minor and brief.
13. Scrope’s Inn (See TIC.)
14. Tamworth’s “New” or “Grete” Inn on Chancery Lane. (See annotations to Map D.)