Lincoln's Inn

An Introduction to Lincoln's Inn

The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is said to take its name from Henry de Lacy, third Earl of Lincoln, who died in 1311. His own great house was adjacent and he is credited with being the Society's patron. Although the other three Inns of Court are of comparable antiquity, having evolved from uncertain origins in the fourteenth century, Lincoln's Inn can claim the oldest extant records, the Black Books, which record its principal activities from 1422 to this day.

The Inn lies to the north of the Strand (and the two Temples) and to the south of High Holborn (and Gray's Inn). The present character of Lincoln's Inn owes much to the fact that its precincts and buildings - the medieval Hall and Gateway abutting onto Chancery Lane, the late seventeenth century New Square in the centre, and the magnificent Victorian gothic Great Hall and Library beside Lincoln's Inn Fields - survived nearly unscathed the devastations of the Blitz. Striking as they are, these buildings however are not merely architectural and historical tourist attractions, but provide the professional home for the practising bar and many of the educational facilities for the training of students. It is to meet those needs that the Inn exists and on which it expends the bulk of its resources.

Names famous in the law naturally feature among its alumni, such as Sir Matthew Hale and Lord Mansfield, Chief Justices of the Kings Bench in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or more recently, Lord Denning and Lord Hailsham, but it has also served as a training ground for those whose achievements were in other fields. Fifteen Prime Ministers, from Pitt to Tony Blair, have been members. The names of the novelists Charles Reade, Charles Kingsley, Wilkie Collins, Rider Haggard, and John Galsworthy will all be found in the membership records. Of literary figures, perhaps standing rather higher than those is John Donne, who was Preacher to the Society and laid the foundation stone of the present Chapel, built in 1623. And perhaps the most famous name of them all, Thomas More, admitted as a student in 1496, he went on to become a bencher and governor of the Inn.