Inns

Inns of Court (Hospitia curicr). The Societies of the Middle Temple, Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn are so called because the students therein study the law to fit them for practising in the Law Courts. These, together with the Inns of Chancery and the two Serjeants' Inns, are said to have formed one of the most famous universities in the world for the study of laws, and here exercises were performed, lectures read, and degrees conferred in the Common Law, as they are at other universities in the present day in the Canon and Civil Laws. The degrees were those of barristers (first styled apprentices, from apprcndre, to learn), who answered to our bachelors as the style and degree of a Serjeant (now abolished) did to that of doctor. These studies are now under the control of the Council of Legal Education, who have endeavoured to reinvigorate them by holding out rewards for excellence in the various branches of legal study, and particularly in Roman law and jurisprudence, and by making a certain standard of excellence compulsory upon all students seeking admission as barristers. The Inns of Chancery, Clifford's Inn, Symond's Inn, Clement's Inn, and others are subordinate to the Inns of Court properly so termed.