What is "inns of chancery"

Chancery \Chan"cer*y\, n. [F. chancellerie, LL. cancellaria, from L. cancellarius. See Chancellor, and cf. Chancellery.]

1. In England, formerly, the highest court of judicature next to the Parliament, exercising jurisdiction at law, but chiefly in equity; but under the jurisdiction act of 1873 it became the chancery division of the High Court of Justice, and now exercises jurisdiction only in equity.

2. In the Unites States, a court of equity; equity; proceeding in equity.

   Note: A court of chancery, so far as it is a court of equity, in the English and American sense, may be generally, if not precisely, described as one having jurisdiction in cases of rights, recognized and protected by the municipal jurisprudence, where a plain, adequate, and complete remedy can not be had in the courts of common law. In some of the American States, jurisdiction at law and in equity centers in the same tribunal. The courts of the United States also have jurisdiction both at law and in equity, and in all such cases they exercise their jurisdiction, as courts of law, or as courts of equity, as the subject of adjudication may require. In others of the American States, the courts that administer equity are distinct tribunals, having their appropriate judicial officers, and it is to the latter that the appellation courts of chancery is usually applied; but, in American law, the terms equity and court of equity are more frequently employed than the corresponding terms chancery and court of chancery.
   --Burrill.

   Inns of chancery. See under Inn.

   To get (or to hold) In chancery (Boxing), to get the head of an antagonist under one's arm, so that one can pommel it with the other fist at will; hence, to have wholly in One's power. The allusion is to the condition of a person involved in the chancery court, where he was helpless, while the lawyers lived upon his estate.

Inn \Inn\ ([i^]n), n. [AS. in, inn, house, chamber, inn, from AS. in in; akin to Icel. inni house. See In.]

1. A place of shelter; hence, dwelling; habitation; residence; abode. [Obs.]
   --Chaucer.

   Therefore with me ye may take up your inn For this same night.
   --Spenser.

2. A house for the lodging and entertainment of travelers or wayfarers; a tavern; a public house; a hotel.

   Note: As distinguished from a private boarding house, an inn is a house for the entertainment of all travelers of good conduct and means of payment, as guests for a brief period, not as lodgers or boarders by contract.

   The miserable fare and miserable lodgment of a provincial inn.
   --W. Irving.

3. The town residence of a nobleman or distinguished person; as, Leicester Inn. [Eng.]

4. One of the colleges (societies or buildings) in London, for students of the law barristers; as, the Inns of Court; the Inns of Chancery; Serjeants' Inns.

   Inns of chancery (Eng.), colleges in which young students formerly began their law studies, now occupied chiefly bp attorn`ys, solocitors, etc.

   Inns of court (Eng.), the four societies of ``students and practicers of the law of England'' which in London exercise the exclusive right of admitting persons to practice at the bar; also, the buildings in which the law students and barristers have their chambers. They are the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn.

The Inns of Chancery or Hospida Cancellarie were a group of buildings and legal institutions in London initially attached to the Inns of Court and used as offices for the clerks of chancery, from which they drew their name. Existing from at least 1344, the Inns gradually changed their purpose, and became both the offices and accommodation for solicitors (as the Inns of Court were to barristers) and a place of initial training for barristers.

The practice of training barristers at the Inns of Chancery had died out by 1642, and the Inns instead became dedicated associations and offices for solicitors. With the founding of the Society of Gentlemen Practisers in 1739 and the Law Society of England and Wales in 1825, a single unified professional association for solicitors, the purpose of the Inns died out, and after a long period of decline the last one ( Clement's Inn) was sold in 1903 and demolished in 1934.