In 1399 a rental of the property of the Convent of Malmesbury was drawn up, in which the following items appear[108]:—
| "De Firmario novi hospicii apud Londoniam vocati Lyncolnesynne ad iiiior terminos solvendo per annum | VIII li. pro missa Abbatis |
| De tenemento quondam Gaillardi Poet in Holbourne | XX s |
| De tenemento quondam Walter Bartone Allutarii | XIII s IIII d" |
Written in a different hand, with different coloured ink, at the bottom margin of the page, and certainly of a later date, the following remarks have been added:—
| "London | Hospicium Armigeri jam magnum hospitiumquod est ruinosum reddit per annum | XL s |
| Tenura | Celda proxima annexa hospicio reddit per annum | IX s |
| tenencium | Secunda celda reddit per annum | X s |
| infra silvam | Tertia celda reddit per annum | VIII s |
| magni hospicii | Quarta celda que est ..." | |
| [Here the page is cut away.] | ||
The "Inn of the Esquire ... which is ruinous" of the marginal note is obviously the same as the "Lyncolnesynne" of the original entry, with the rent reduced from £8 to 40s. per annum. It is not possible to date this note, but it was probably made in the fifteenth century. In 1422 the Society of Lincoln's Inn took what is believed to be their first lease of the Bishop of Chichester property on the west side of Chancery Lane; but the society existed before that date, as in the Corporation letter books Thomas Broun is described as Maunciple of Lincoln's Inn, under date of 1417. In 1466 the society was paying 9s. yearly to the prior of St. Giles' Hospital for Lepers for another part of its property; and no other rents, apparently, were being paid for any other part on the west side of Chancery Lane. But in the Black Books of that Inn (vol. i., p. 8), under a date only sixteen years later than that of their lease of the Bishop's Inn, the following entry occurs:—
"In the vigil of the Apostles Peter and Paul 16 Henry VI. (1438) John Row delivered to John Fortescue and others in the name of the Society to be paid to ... Halssewylle for the farm of Lyncollysyn in arrear for the 15th year (Henry VI.) in the time of Bartholomew Bolney then Pensioner in full payment 40s. out of money received by him."
The yearly rent for the farm of Lyncollysyn is the same, therefore, as was paid for the ruinous "Hospicium Armigeri"; and in the fourteenth century, as Foss has pointed out, the term "esquire" was often used as a synonym for "serjeant." The Black Books also show that in 1457 a payment was made by the society to the gardener of Staple Inn, from which Inn access could be easily obtained to the "great garden" in which the "Hospicium Armigeri" was situated. It would seem not improbable, therefore, that the second and third Lincoln's Inns may, in the year 1438, have been coexistent and under the same rule. But there is at present no evidence that this same society was connected with the Inn in Shoe Lane, which 130 years earlier had belonged to Henry de Lacy.
John Fortescue, who received the 40s. for payment to Halssewyll, became serjeant in 1441 and Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1442. In 1465 he wrote his famous work, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, in which he says:
"The laws are taught in a certain place of public study nigh to the King's Courts.... There are ten lesser houses or Inns (and sometimes more) which are called houses of Chancery, and to every one of them belongeth 100 students at least, who, as they grow to ripeness, are admitted into the greater Inns, called Inns of Court, of which there are four in number, and to the least of which belongeth 200 students or more."