Lincoln’s Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records to 1422. T he Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is said to take its name from Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln who died in 1311. His own great house was nearby and he is credited with being the Society's patron. However, the origins of the name may as easily be derived from Robert de Chesney Bishop of Lincoln who acquired the 'old Temple' on the site in 1161. The present character of Lincoln's Inn owes much to the fact that its precincts and buildings - the medieval Hall and Gateway abutting onto Chancery Lane, the late seventeenth century New Square in the centre, and the magnificent Victorian gothic Great Hall and Library beside Lincoln's Inn Fields - survived nearly unscathed the devastations o