Qualla: Lincoln's Inn

Lincoln's Inn: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Basher Eyre, CC BY-SA 2.0. Until 1846, the only requirement for being called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn was to have eaten five dinners a term and read the first sentence of a paper prepared for you by the steward. Lord Mansfield, the great eighteenth-century Chief Justice, passed those tests. So did countless men whose names are now carved into the foundations of English common law — and a few who would later run distant countries. The Inn that admitted them sits on eleven acres in Holborn, between Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, separated from the surrounding neighbourhood by a brick wall first raised in 1562. The story is that Ben Jonson did some of the bricklaying himself. The Inn's own records, the Black Books, run back continuously to 1422, making them older than the printing press and almost any other working archive in England.

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Image: Basher Eyre | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lincoln's Inn: How the Lawyers Got Here

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit VillageHero from Ulm, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two thirteenth-century decisions, more than anything else, made Lincoln's Inn possible. A papal bull in 1218 banned the clergy from teaching common law, and on 2 December 1234 Henry III decreed that no institution of legal education could exist within the City of London. The lawy...

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Image: VillageHero from Ulm, Germany | CC BY-SA 2.0

Lincoln's Inn: The Gatehouse and the Chapel

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. The oldest surviving piece of Lincoln's Inn is the Gatehouse on Chancery Lane, built between 1518 and 1521. The Treasurer of the day, Sir Thomas Lovell, paid at least a third of the cost out of his own pocket and personally supervised construction — which is why his arms still ha...

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Lincoln's Inn: Black Books and Stranger Customs

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rob Bogaerts, CC0. The Black Books reward patient reading. In 1478 one John Glynne was expelled from the Society for using "presumptious and unsuitable words" in front of the governors. In 1505 the rules had to specifically forbid a Master from being found in Clerks' Commons unless he was studying ...

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Image: Rob Bogaerts | CC0

Lincoln's Inn: The Alumni

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pavel Golovkin, CC BY 4.0. Lincoln's Inn does not merely produce barristers; it has produced governments. William Pitt the Younger and H. H. Asquith and Tony Blair were members. So was William Ewart Gladstone. So, on a different continent, was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who studied here in 1876 and would later b...

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Image: Pavel Golovkin | CC BY 4.0

Lincoln's Inn: Reading and Eating

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Library contains roughly 150,000 volumes, including the Hale Manuscripts left to the Inn by the jurist Sir Matthew Hale on his death in 1676, plus over a thousand rare manuscripts and a complete set of Parliamentary records. Queen Victoria opened it in 1845, along with the 12...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 4.0