INNS OF COURT are certain societies in London exclusively invested with the right to call to the bar in England. The colleges of the English professors and students of common law ,are called inns, the old English word foe the houses of noblemen, bishops and others of extraordinary note being of the same tion as the French hotel. Societies of lawyers, which before the Conquest held their chief abodes for study in ecclesiastical houses, began to be collected into permanent residences soon after the Court of Common Pleas was directed to be held in a fixed place,— a stipulation which occurs in the great charters both of King John and Henry HI. In these houses exercises Were performed, lectures read and degrees conferred. The Inns of Court are each self-governing and all have equal privileges, and they are officered by benchers—members of standing at the bar— and stewards, and possess the power of dis barring members in case of serious misde meanor. The inns have extensive ranges of
buildings with suites of chambers generally oc cupied by barristers. Each inn maintains a chapel, the Inner and Middle Temple having the joint use of the Temple Clutreh.1 The four inns of court are: the Inner Temple and Middle Temple (formerly the dwelling of the Knights Templars, and purchased by some. professors of law more than three . centuries since) ; Lin coln's Inn and Gray's Inn (ancienty to the earls of Lincoln and Gray)._ King's Dublin, the legal school in the Irish capital, an the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, the Scottish law incorporation, perform analogous functions the English inns of court in their respective countries.