not possible to date
this note, but it was probably made in the fifteenth century. In 1422
the Society of Lincoln's Inn took what is believed to be their first
lease of the Bishop of Chichester property on the west side of Chancery
Lane; but the society existed before that date, as in the Corporation
letter books Thomas Broun is described as Maunciple of Lincoln's Inn,
under date of 1417. In 1466 the society was paying 9s. yearly to the
prior of St. Giles' Hospital for Lepers for another part of its
property; and no other rents, apparently, were being paid for any other
part on the west side of Chancery Lane. But in the _Black Books_ of that
Inn (vol. i., p. 8), under a date only sixteen years later than that of
their lease of the Bishop's Inn, the following entry occurs:--

"In the vigil of the Apostles Peter and Paul 16 Henry VI.
(1438) John Row delivered to John Fortescue and others in the
name of the Society to be paid to ... Halssewylle _for the farm
of Lyncollysyn_ in arrear for the 15th year (Henry VI.) in the
time of Bartholomew Bolney then Pensioner in full payment 40s.
out of money received by him."

The yearly rent for the farm of Lyncollysyn is the same, therefore, as
was paid for the ruinous "Hospicium Armigeri"; and in the fourteenth
century, as Foss has pointed out, the term "esquire" was often used as a
synonym for "serjeant." The _Black Books_ also show that in 1457 a
payment was made by the society to the gardener of Staple Inn, from
which Inn access could be easily obtained to the "great garden" in which
the "Hospicium Armigeri" was situated. It would seem not improbable,
therefore, that the second and third Lincoln's Inns may, in the year
1438, have been coexistent and under the same rule. But there is at
present no evidence that this same society was connected with the Inn
in Shoe Lane, which 130 years earlier had belonged to Henry de Lacy.

John Fortescue, who received the 40s. for payment to Halssewyll, became
serjeant in 1441 and Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1442. In 1465
he wrote his famous work, _De Laudibus Legum Angliae_, in which he says:

"The laws are taught in a certain place of public study nigh to
the King's Courts.... There are ten lesser houses or Inns (and
sometimes more) which are called houses of Chancery, and to
every one of them belongeth 100 students at least, who, as they
grow to ripeness, are admitted into the