Clifford's Inn

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Clifford's Inn was an Inn of Chancery, which formerly stood on Clifford's Inn Passage, off Fleet Street. It was the last of the Inns of Chancery to survive.

[edit] History

All of the Inns of Chancery were attached to an Inn of Court; Clifford's Inn was associated to the Inner Temple.

Clifford's Inn is notable for being both the first-attested of the Inns of Chancery, being mentioned in 1344 as accommodation for law students, and also the last of the Inns to be dissolved, being sold in 1903. Together with the other Inns, it had lost its educational role after the English Civil War.

After the Great Fire of London, the Fire Courts, which adjudicated property disputes arising from the fire, sat in Clifford's Inn; two of the judges were Sir Hugh Wyndham and Sir Wadham Wyndham.

Famous members of the Inn include the jurists John Selden and Edward Coke. The Inn was made famous by Charles Lamb in the 19th century in his Essays of Elia, and Samuel Butler lived in the Inn for many years. Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf lived in the buildings of Clifford's Inn between 1912 and 1913.

The buildings of the Inn were demolished in 1934, except a gatehouse (on Clifford's Inn Passage) which survives to this day. The archives of the Inn, rediscovered in the late 20th century, are held by the Inner Temple.