Lincoln's Inn Hall: the Lord Chancellor's Court.
From a drawing by T. H. Shepherd.
It has been shown that the deep hollow, at the bottom of which flowed the stream of Holborn, formed a natural barrier between the walled city and its suburb. It also divided the guilds and trade associations of London from that plexus of schools of laws which at first radiated from Holborn Bars. The guilds recognised the leading of the Mayor and Commonalty; the schools of law looked for direction chiefly to the law officers of the Crown. In Florence, and other cities of the Middle Ages, the associations of judges, attorneys, and wool-merchant lawyers were as much a part of civic and communal life as any other guild; the different conditions which existed in England led to different consequences.
But the hold which the King's officers obtained, both over the machinery of the Courts and over the voluntary societies of law students, was the cause, no doubt, of the attempts which were made during the Tudor and early Stuart periods to organise all the Inns of Court and Chancery into a University of Law. Those attempts failed; chiefly through the lack of wisdom displayed in issuing arbitrary and meddlesome Orders in Council, instead of allowing unification to mature on those natural and voluntary lines which had already been laid down.
Now the Inns of Chancery have practically vanished, leaving the Inns of Court to monopolise all the glory of the great future which undoubtedly still lies before them.
THE GUILDHALL
By Charles Welch, F.S.A.
Guildhall, the home of civic government and the battle-ground of many a hard-won fight for civil and religious liberty, was built anew by the self-denying efforts of a generation of London citizens just five hundred years ago. This great work took ten years and more in building, and, like its sister edifices of still earlier days, the Tower of London, London Bridge, and Westminster Hall, tested to the utmost the energy and resources of the Londoners of those times. We learn from Fabyan, the alderman chronicler, that the building was begun in the year 1411 by Thomas Knowles, then mayor, and his brethren the aldermen. He tells us:—
"The same was made of a little cottage a large and great house as now it standeth, towards the charges whereof the companies gave large benevolences; also offences of men were pardoned for sums of money church for the maintenance of a chaplain to celebrate fines, amercements, and other things employed."
