Clifford's Inn

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Clifford's Inn circa 1895 (drawing by Herbert Railton).

Clifford Inn or The Honorable Society of Clifford's Inn - founded in 1344 - was the oldest of the originally quite numerous English bar associations ( Inns of Court ) for barristers . It was dissolved in 1903. The bar associations that still exist today are the Honorable Societies of Inner Temple & Middle Temple , Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn .

Inn (or hospitium ) in this context means a town house or a pension - especially in the original period a pension for students who studied law here. Therefore, the building complex in which the Bar Association was located was also called Clifford Inn .

The coat of arms of the Clifford's Inn was a modified version of the coat of arms of the Clifford family , Earls of Cumberland. It shows a horizontally three-part shield, the upper and lower fields yellow and azure blue, the middle field red.

history

Sign at Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4.

Since the end of the Norman era, justice in England has been a privilege of the Church. It was not until Edward I passed the law separating ecclesiastical and secular law in 1292 that the barristers and solicitors , as they are called today, came under the state. This meant that secular training centers were needed, since until this point in time the legal doctrine lay with the monasteries. But a few years later, first by a decree of Heinrich III. banned legal training in the area of ​​the City of London and, secondly, a papal bull forbade the clergy from teaching rights outside of ecclesiastical institutions. As a result, legal training now had to be done by attorneys outside of London's city limits. So it came about that the so-called Inns of Court were formed , preferably in the village of Holborn , which was not far from Westminster .

And so the first inn - the Clifford's Inn - was founded in 1344 . Its name is derived from the Clifford family, Earls of Cumberland : they made the property available to students for £ 10 a year. On March 26, 1618, it was acquired by the Honorable Society of Clifford's Inn for the sum of £ 600, on condition that the Clifford family reserve the right to propose the teaching lawyers and members of the council that presided over the inn.

The management of the Inn was incumbent on a council of twelve lawyers, one of whom acted as chairman and who were elected by the members of the Inn - initially for life, from 1668 for a period of three years. The tasks of the chairman included the definition of the subjects, the daily routine and the instruction of the house staff. He had the right to sit at the head of the table at meals and he was given a special allotment of beer. Between 1668 and 1890 only 21 people held this position of chairman.

The resolution

With the reorganization of legal training in England in 1852, the Inns lost their original function; most of them subsequently disbanded. In 1903 it was also determined by the members of Clifford's Inn that their institution had become obsolete. They unanimously decided to dissolve, sell the building and hand over the proceeds and the reserves to the Attorney General for England and Wales (the chairman of the English legal profession) so that he could use it appropriately. The assets were auctioned on May 14, 1903, at a price of £ 100,000, "a ridiculously low amount" it was found to be.

The buildings on Fetter Lane in London EC4 were demolished in 1934, only the gatehouse still stands in memory of Decimus Burton , who lived and worked here from 1833 to 1834. Today the house houses offices and apartments, including the English writer Virginia Woolf lived here.

Famous members (selection)

The most famous members of Cliffords Inn include Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634) and John Selden (1585–1654).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Philip Norman: Clifford's Inn. In: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 1903 No. 2., p. 248
  2. ↑ FL Griggs: Clifford's Inn and the Protection of Ancient Buildings. In: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 1903.
  3. ^ Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner: London 1: The City of London. New Haven, London: Yale University Press 2002, pp. 293/94.
  4. ↑ Humphry William Woolrych: The Life of the Right Honorable Sir Edward Coke. London, J. & WT Clarke 1826, p. 21.
  5. ↑ Philip Norman: Clifford's Inn. In: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 1903/2/1, p. 239.

literature

  • JW Loftie: The Inns of Court and Chancery. New York, Macmillsn 1895.
  • H. Donate Steel: Origin and History of English Inns of Chancery. In: The Virginia Law Register, No. 13 of 1907.
  • Francis Watt, Dunbar Plunket Barton, Charles Benham: The Story of the Inns of Court. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1928.

Web links