Lincoln's Inn

A Dictionary of London by Henry A Harben.

One of the Inns of Court on the west side of Chancery Lane, outside the City boundary.


The name seems to have been originally applied to what was afterwards the town house of the Abbot of Malmesbury, on the south side of Holborn, east of Staple Inn, for in the Cartulary of the Abbey in the British Museum (Cott. MS. Faustina, B. VIII.) the house is referred to as "totum hospicium nostrum vocatum Lyncolnesynne." It appears from the Cartulary that the property originally belonged to Thomas Lincoln, who may have given his name to the house. He seems to have been a counter or serjeant, practising in the Court of Common Pleas, temp. Ed. III., and after he disposed of his Holborn property he may have gone to Chancery Lane, to the site of the present Lincoln's Inn, at that time in the possession of the bishops of Chichester.

The history of the Inn does not come within the scope of this work.

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