The Roman station of Veldidena was succeeded by the Premonstratensian abbey of Wilten, both serving to guard the important strategical bridge over the Inn. In 1180 the count of Andechs (the local lord) moved the market-place over to the right bank of the river (where is the convent), and in 1187 we first hear of the town by its present name. Between 1233 and 1235 it was fortified, and a castle built for the lord. But it was only about 1420 that Archduke Frederick IV. (“with the empty pockets”) built himself a new castle in Innsbruck, which then replaced Meran as the capital of Tirol. The county of Tirol was generally held by a cadet line of the Austrian house, the count being almost an independent ruler. But the last princeling of this kind died in 1665, since which date Innsbruck and Tirol have been governed from Vienna. In 1552 Maurice of Saxony surprised and nearly took Innsbruck, almost capturing the emperor Charles V. himself, who escaped owing to a mutiny among Maurice’s troops. In the patriotic war of 1809, Innsbruck played a great part and suffered much, while in 1848, at the time of the revolution in Vienna, it joyfully received the emperor Ferdinand.

(W. A. B. C.)

INNS OF COURT. The Inns of Court and Chancery are voluntary non-corporate legal societies seated in London, having their origin about the end of the 13th and the commencement of the 14th century.

Dugdale (Origines Juridiciales) states that the learned in English law were anciently persons in holy orders, the justices of the king’s court being bishops, abbots and the like. But in 1207 the clergy were prohibited by canon from acting in the temporal courts. The result proving prejudicial to the interests of the community, a commission of inquiry was issued by Edward I. (1290), and this was followed up (1292) by a second commission, which among other things directed that students “apt and eager” should be brought from the provinces and placed in proximity to the courts of law now fixed by Magna Carta at Westminster (see [Inn]). These students were accordingly located in what became known as the Inns of Court and Chancery, the latter designated by Fortescue (De Laudibus) as “the earliest settled places for students of the law,” the germ of what Sir Edward Coke subsequently spoke of as our English juridical university. In these Inns of Court and Chancery, thus constituted, and corresponding to the ordinary college, the students, according to Fortescue, not only studied the laws and divinity, but further learned to dance, sing and play instrumental music, “so that these hostels, being nurseries or seminaries of the court, were therefore called Inns of Court.”

Stow in his Survey (1598) says: “There is in and about this city a whole university, as it were, of students, practisers or pleaders and judges of the laws of this realm”; and he goes on to enumerate the several societies, fourteen in number, then existing, corresponding nearly with those recognized in the present day, of which the Inns of Court, properly so-called, are and always have been four, namely Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple and Gray’s Inn. To these were originally attached as subordinate Inns of Chancery, Furnival’s Inn, Thavie’s Inn (to Lincoln’s Inn), Clifford’s Inn, Clement’s Inn (to the Inner Temple), New Inn (to the Middle Temple), Staple’s Inn, Barnard’s Inn (to Gray’s Inn), but they were cut adrift by the older Inns and by the middle of the 18th century had ceased to have any legal character (vide infra). In addition to these may be specified Serjeant’s Inn, a society composed solely of serjeants-at-law, which ceased to exist in 1877. Besides the Inns of Chancery above enumerated, there were others, such as Lyon’s Inn, which was pulled down in 1868, and Scrope’s Inn and Chester or Strand Inn, spoken of by Stow, which have long been removed, and the societies to which they belonged have disappeared. The four Inns of Court stand on a footing of complete equality, no priority being conceded to or claimed by one inn over another. Their jurisdictions and privileges are equal, and upon affairs of common interest the benchers of the four inns meet in conference. From the earliest times there has been an interchange of fellowship between the four houses; nevertheless the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, and the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, have maintained a closer alliance.

The members of an Inn of Court consist of benchers, barristers and students. The benchers are the senior members of the society, who are invested with the government of the body to which they belong. They are more formally designated “masters of the bench,” are self-elected and unrestricted as to numbers. Usually a member of an inn, on attaining the rank of king’s counsel, is invited to the bench. Other members of long standing are also occasionally chosen, but no member by becoming a king’s counsel or by seniority of standing acquires the right of being nominated a bencher. The benchers vary in number from twenty in Gray’s Inn to seventy and upwards in Lincoln’s Inn and the Inner Temple. The powers of the benchers are practically without limit within their respective societies; their duties, however, are restricted to the superintendence and management of the concerns of the inn, the admission of candidates as students, the calling of them to the bar and the exercise of discipline generally over the members. The meetings of the benchers are variously denominated a “parliament” in the Inner and Middle Temples, a “pension” in Gray’s Inn and a “council” in Lincoln’s Inn. The judges of the superior courts are the visitors of the inns, and to them alone can an appeal be had when either of the societies refuses to call a member to the bar, or to reinstate in his privileges a barrister who has been disbarred for misconduct. The presiding or chief officer is the treasurer, one of the benchers, who is elected annually to that dignity. Other benchers fulfil the duties of master of the library, master of the walks or gardens, dean of the chapel and so forth, while others are readers, whose functions are referred to below.

The usages of the different inns varied somewhat formerly in regard both to the term of probationary studentship enforced and to the procedure involved in a “call” to the bar by which the student is converted into the barrister. In the present day the entrance examination, the course of study and the examinations to be passed on the completion of the curriculum are identical and common to all the inns (see [English Law]). When once called to the bar, no hindrance beyond professional etiquette limits a barrister’s freedom of action; so also members may on application to the benchers, and on payment of arrears of dues (if any), leave the society to which they belong, and thus cease altogether to be members of the bar likewise. A member of an Inn of Court retains his name on the lists of his inn for life by means of a small annual payment varying from £1 to £5, which at one or two of the inns is compounded for by a fixed sum taken at the call to the bar.

The ceremony of the “call” varies in detail at the different inns. It takes place after dinner (before dinner at the Middle Temple, which is the only inn at which students are called in their wigs and gowns), in the “parliament,” “pension” or “council” chamber of the benchers. The benchers sit at a table round which are ranged the students to be called. Each candidate being provided with a glass of wine, the treasurer or senior bencher addresses them and the senior student briefly replies. “Call Parties” are also generally held by the new barristers; at the Middle Temple they are allowed in hall.

During the reign of Edward III. the Inns of Court and Chancery, based on the collegiate principle, prospered under the supervision and protection of the crown. In 1381 Wat Tyler invaded the Temple, and in the succeeding century (1450) Jack Cade meditated pulling down the Inns of Court and killing the lawyers. It would appear, moreover, that the inmates of the inns were themselves at times disorderly and in conflict with the citizens. Fortescue (c. 1464) describing these societies thus speaks of them: “There belong to the law ten lesser inns, which are called the Inns of Chancery, in each of which there are one hundred students at least, and in some a far greater number, though not constantly residing. After the students have made some progress here they are admitted to the Inns of Court. Of these there are four, in the least frequented of which there are about two hundred students. The discipline is excellent, and the mode of study well adapted for proficiency.” This system had probably existed for two centuries before Fortescue wrote, and continued to be enforced down to the time of Sir Thomas More (1498), of Chief Justice Dyer (1537) and of Sir Edward Coke (1571). By the time of Sir Matthew Hale (1629) the custom for law students to be first entered to an Inn of Chancery before being admitted to an Inn of Court had become obsolete, and thenceforth the Inns of Chancery have been abandoned to the attorneys. Stow in his Survey succinctly points out the course of reading enforced at the end of the 16th century. He says that the Inns of Court were replenished partly by students coming from the Inns of Chancery, who went thither from the universities and sometimes immediately from grammar schools; and, having spent some time in studying the first elements of the law, and having performed the exercises called “bolts,” “moots” and “putting of cases,” they proceeded to be admitted to, and become students in, one of the Inns of Court. Here continuing for the space of seven years or thereabouts, they frequented readings and other learned exercises, whereby, growing ripe in the knowledge of the laws, they were, by the general consent either of the benchers or of the readers, called to the degree of barrister, and so enabled to practise in chambers and at the bar. This ample provision for legal study continued with more or less vigour down to nearly the commencement of the 18th century. A languor similar to that which affected the church and the universities then gradually supervened, until the fulfilment of the merest forms sufficed to confer the dignity of advocate and pleader. This was maintained until about 1845, when steps were taken for reviving and extending the ancient discipline and course of study, bringing them into harmony with modern ideas and requirements.