Clement's Inn (Vol. iii., p. 84.).—This inn was neither "a court of law" nor "an inn of court," but "an inn of chancery;" according to the distinction drawn by Sir John Fortescue, in his De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, chap. xlix., written between 1460 and 1470.
The evidence of its antiquity is traced back to an earlier date than 1486; for, according to Dugdale (Orig., p. 187.), in a Record of Michaelmas, 19 Edward IV., 1479, it is spoken of as then, and diu ante, an Inn "hominum Curiæ Legis temporalis, necnon hominum Consiliariorum ejusdem Legis."
The early history of the Inns of Court and Chancery is involved in the greatest obscurity; and it is difficult to account for the original difference between the two denominations.
Any facts which your correspondents may be able to communicate on this subject, or in reference to what were the ten Inns of Chancery existing in Fortescue's time, but not named by him, or relating to the history of either of the Inns, whether of Court or Chancery, will be most gratefully received by me, and be of important service at the present time, when I am preparing
for the press my two next volumes of The Judges of England.
Edward Foss.
Street-End House, near Canterbury.
Words are men's daughters (Vol. iii., p. 38.).—I take this to be a proverbial sentence. In the Gnomologia of Fuller we have "Words are for women; actions for men"—but there is a nearer approach to it in a letter written by Sir Thomas Bodley to his librarian about the year 1604. He says,
"Sir John Parker hath promised more than you have signified: but words are women, and deeds are men."
It was no doubt an adoption of the worthy knight, and I shall leave it to others to trace out the true author—hoping it may never be ascribed to an ancestor of