History
The Honorable Society of King’s Inns is the oldest institution of
legal education in Ireland. It was founded in 1541 during the reign of
Henry VIII when the king granted the Society the lands and
properties on which the Four Courts now stand but which were then
occupied by a Dominican monastery. When the Four Courts were
built in the 1790s, King's Inns moved to Constitution Hill and the
benchers commissioned James Gandon to design their present property.
In the Middle Ages, the need for apprentice
lawyers to learn about common law led to the founding of hostels where
they could live and study. The Inns of Court were places where the
students were provided with accommodation, meals and tuition. Up
to 1800 the buildings at Inns Quay provided all that was needed for
practice at the bar. There were chambers where barristers lived and
worked, a hall for eating and drinking, a library for research, a
chapel for prayer and gardens for recreation. Things changed somewhat
with the move to Constitution Hill. Chambers and a chapel
were to have been built but the plans were never executed. However,
many of the 17th century traditions remain or are co-mingled with 21st
century developments.
The formal records of King's Inns (the "Black
Book") date from 1607. Initially a voluntary society but by 1634
membership had become compulsory for barristers wishing to practise in
the courts. After the Williamite wars of the 1690s catholics were
effectively excluded from the legal profession by the penal laws.
This exclusion lasted for a century until the Catholic Relief Act of
1792 when catholics were allowed to practise at the outer Bar.
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