This was the residence of Dr. John Mackworth, who was Dean of Lincoln in the reign of Henry VI. When leased by his successor to Lyonel Barnard, it took the name which it now bears. The Inn was let to students of Law as early as 1454, for in that year Stow records that there was a great affray in Fleet Street between ‘men of Court’ and the inhabitants there, in the course of which the Queen’s Attorney was slain. As punishment, the principal Governors of Clifford’s Inn, Furnival’s Inn, and Barnard’s Inn were sent to prison.
Barnard’s Inn was governed by a Principal and twelve Ancients. The study of legal forms was insisted on with great strictness. Fines were imposed of one halfpenny for every defective word, one farthing for every defective syllable, and one penny for every improper word in writing the writs according to the form of the Chancery, in the moots of the House.[76]
A Reader was appointed by Gray’s Inn, and great respect was paid to him. The Principal, accompanied by the Ancients and Gentlemen in Commons in their gowns, met him at the rails of the House on his coming, and conducted him into the Hall.
This is a delightful fifteenth-century building. The original timber and rough-cast exterior was cased in red brick in the eighteenth century. It has a high-pitched roof and louvre in the centre, and, within, an open timber roof, and some heraldic glass in the windows (1500). It stands in a small courtyard, beyond which there used to be another Court, wherein were the Library and Kitchen, and, beyond, houses grouped about a railed-in garden.
Portraits of Lord Chief Justice Holt, the most distinguished Principal, and of Lord Burghley, Bacon, Lord Keeper Coventry, and Charles II. once hung upon the walls. In 1854 the Society consisted of a Principal, nine Ancients, and five Companions. The Companions were chosen by the Principal and Ancients. The advantage of being a Companion was, in the evidence given before the Royal Commission in 1855, stated to be ‘the dining’; the advantage of being an Ancient ‘dinners and some little fees.’ Barnard’s Inn is now the property of the Mercers’ Company, who moved their School hither in 1894. Only the Hall now (1909) remains of the old buildings. Even the passage from Holborn has been altered, and an imposing block of offices, fronting Holborn, is in course of erection, behind which lie the Hall and modern School buildings.
Furnival’s Inn, which Stow says belonged to Sir William Furnival and Thomasin, his wife, in the reign of Richard II., lay to the west of the Bishop of Ely’s Palace in Holborn. It was brought by the heiress of the Furnivals to the Earls of Shrewsbury, from whom it passed to the Society of Lincoln’s Inn, and was by them leased to the Principal and Fellows of the Inn of Chancery there inhabiting (1548).
Inigo Jones erected a building on this site in 1640, which was afterwards demolished. It was rebuilt in 1820, and the site is now occupied by part of the new offices of the Prudential Assurance Company. Of this Inn Sir Thomas More was Reader for more than three years, and here Charles Dickens wrote the ‘Pickwick Papers,’ and here he gave John Westlock chambers in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit.’ To Charles Dickens’s rooms in Furnival’s Inn came an artist seeking employment, who offered two or three drawings to illustrate ‘Pickwick,’ which the rising young author did not think suitable. This artist was William Makepeace Thackeray. A bust of Dickens by Percy Fitzgerald is placed within the entrance of the modern pink pile of offices.
Opposite Ely House, and adjoining Crookhorn Alley, stood Thavie’s Inn, which is another form, no doubt, of Davy’s Inn. It is spelt so in the early records, and the will of John Tavy (1348) mentions his hospice in St. Andrew, Holborn (see pp.[ 5] and [39]). The spelling ‘Tavy,’ I suppose, indicates the Welsh origin of this Mr. Davy. A John Davy occurs as holding lands in Holborn fifty years later. This Inn was also closely connected with Lincoln’s Inn.
Of the Inns of Chancery which were attached to the Inner Temple, only Clifford’s Inn survives, and its days are numbered. Lyon’s Inn, which is mentioned as an Inn of Chancery in King Henry V.’s time, lay between Old Wych Street and Holywell Street, and disappeared with them