The Middle Temple

It was once speculated that the two Inns of the Temple arose from the division of a single earlier one, but that is now thought to be improbable. The likelihood must be that the Judges delegated their duty to license, or as we say today to "Call", practitioners to the four Societies that exist today, and that those Societies all came into being at about the same time. An explanation why this Inn is the Middle Temple, when the Outer Temple is no more than the name of a Victorian office building, is found in the 1337 Close Roll.

London 1300
The area of the Temple in 1300

The Templars had kept open the main gate of the Temple in the daytime so that those travelling between the City and Westminster, and to go by river was then the preferred route, could pass through the New Temple and embark at the "bridge" or jetty below. In 1329 there were complaints that the gate was now closed and the bridge ruinous so that travellers, among whom the King's justices and clerks of the Chancery were named, were hindered as they went about their business. In 1337 Langeford was ordered to do further repairs to the bridge, and that order referred to the lane "through the middle of the Court of the Temple", now citing those inconvenienced as including magnates and others coming to parliaments and councils at London who so crossed from the City to Westminster. There cannot be doubt about the line of that lane, for there are reference to another gate somewhat to the East which remained closed (clearly Inner Temple Lane), nor that "Middle Temple Lane" would have been its name in common parlance.

This Inn's Hall was thus in what was seen as the middle of the Temple area. The monastic area was Inner, as nearer to the City. Early references to the two Inns are often to the Inner Inn or to the Middle Inn of the Temple. They were "Inns" because their members lived in common, as had the members of the law schools from which they grew: they were "Inns of Court" because their members were apprentices of the law and so of the Courts.