Thavies Inn

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Thavies Inn was one of the Inns of Chancery and was situated on Holborn, near the site of the present side street and office block named Thavies Inn Buildings. It was associated with Lincoln's Inn. Indeed it is this association that has become bound up with the origins of that Inn of Court. Thavies Inn is the first Inn of Chancery we have a record of and it was the earliest to be dissolved by its patron.

[edit] Origin of property

In 1349 John Thavie, an armourer based in the St Andrew's, Holborn parish, “left a considerable Estate towards the support of the fabric forever” of that church, a legacy which survived the English Reformation. It has been invested carefully through the centuries, and still provides for the church's current upkeep. ^[1]. His name has been transcribed as 'Thavy', 'Tavy' and 'Davy' ie the Welsh surname.

In his Will the property is described as an Inn "wherein the apprentices used to dwell" (note the past tense) and the assumption is that these were 'law apprentices' who were known to lodge along Holborn, to be near the Chancellor's Court ie of the Bishop of Lincoln's establishment there. The property in question is best located by the present Bartlett's Buildings on the south-side of Holborn.

Thavie's original property, which was left for his endowment of the church, may still have been let to 'lawyers' by Thavies executors for income, and may have been the original home of Lincoln's Inn before it relocated to its present site on Chancery Lane.^[2] However, there is considerable confusion as to just how the names of both the Inn of Chancery and the Inn of Court are derived.

The Will's statement uses the past tense and we know from the records of the Inn that the community of clerks had moved to the neighbouring house of John de Besvile; it is this site that is associated with the title of 'Thavies Inn' and the assumption is that the transfer of that name indicates the later lawyers association as having started in the original Thavy premises.

There is a reference, after the relocation but before 1400, to the clerks at Besvile's house being addressed as "treshonorable, tresage compagne de David Inn in Holborn" ie the 'Honorable and Learned Company of David's Inn in Holborn'. A deed of 1419 referring to "Davesynne" is extant. All of these references are important because they are the first record of any formal establishment of lawyers. Lincoln's Inn's own records, the 'Black Books', themselves start in 1422.^[3].

[edit] Bishops, Earls and Thomas 'of Lincoln'

The Templar Order had its first house on Holborn street from sometime in the reign of King Stephen and built one of their characteristic round churches on the site, located at what is now Southampton Buildings, next to Chancery Lane. The Templars relocated to the present Temple area in 1161 selling the first property to Robert de Chesney Bishop of Lincoln as his 'London' palace. The Bishops at that time were also senior government officers of the Crown and those of Lincoln where often the Chancellor, the king's most senior officer.

The Dominicans or 'Black Friars' arrived on Holborn street in 1224, extending and developing their estate between the Holborn/Fleet and Shoe Lane, southerly and down to Fleet Street. For obscure reasons the Archbishop of Canterbury induced them to relocate to the nearby Thames side and eastern side of the Fleet in 1279, the area better known since then as 'Blackfriars'. They sold it to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln in that year.^[4]. It is the claim of Lincoln's Inn that it derives its name from the Earl^[5] as its patron.

In 1369 the Benedictine Abbot of Malmesbury also required a London establishment for his affairs and the Order acquired "Lyncolnesynne", that of one Thomas of Lincoln, who was a Serjeant at law and so a local landlord and nothing to do with the ecclesiastic or lay magnates of similar title/name. The Abbot did not occupy all of the buildings but let them out to various tenants, perhaps some of these were law apprentices and their masters. Thomas's property is located at what is now Furnivall Street on the south-side of Holborn.^[6] That "Lyncolnesynne" was close to the Thavies Inn and Furnival's Inn sites.

The derivation of the present Lincoln's Inn name could simply be of the group that migrated to the present 'Chichester Inn' site on Chancery Lane from Thomas's inn. This was done at the latest by 1442, so that the group must have occupied at sometime something called 'Lincoln's Inn'. However, Thavy's property itself was a sub-division of Henry de Lacy's manor.

Just how or why the Inns of Chancery became subject to the Inns of Court is itself open to conjecture. However, it is notable that the two subject (Thavies and Furnival's) to Lincoln's where not adjacent to its present site unlike the dispositions of the other Chancery Inns to their patron Inns.

Lincoln's sold Thavies Inn for redevelopment in 1785, the proceeds were used to erect 'Stone Buildings'.^[7]

[edit] References

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