that Queen Christina of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, abjured Protestantism, in 1655. There are also several other churches and convents, among the latter the first founded (1593) in Germany by the Capuchins.
The university of Innsbruck was formally founded in 1677, and refounded (after two periods of suspension, 1782–1792 and 1810–1826) in 1826. It is attended by about 1000 students and has a large staff of professors, the theological faculty being controlled by the Jesuits. It has a library of 176,000 books, and 1049 MSS. The University or Jesuit church dates from the early 17th century. The Ferdinandeum is the provincial museum (founded in 1823, though the present building is later). The house known as the Goldne Dachl has its roof covered with gilded copper tiles; it was built about 1425, by Frederick, count of the Tirol, nicknamed “with the empty pockets,” but the balcony and gilded roof were added in 1500 by the emperor Maximilian. Among the other monuments of Innsbruck may be mentioned the Pillar of St Anne, erected in 1706 to commemorate the repulse of the French and the Bavarians in 1703; the Triumphal Arch, built in 1765, on the occasion of the marriage of the future emperor Leopold II. with the Infanta Maria Louisa of Spain; and a fountain, with a bronze statue of Archduke Leopold V., set up in 1863–1877, in memory of the five-hundredth anniversary of the union of the Tirol with Austria.
The Roman station of Veldidena was succeeded by the Premonstratensian abbey of Wilten, both serving to guard the important strategical bridge over the Inn. In 1180 the count of Andechs (the local lord) moved the market-place over to the right bank of the river (where is the convent), and in 1187 we first hear of the town by its present name. Between 1233 and 1235 it was fortified, and a castle built for the lord. But it was only about 1420 that Archduke Frederick IV. (“with the empty pockets”) built himself a new castle in Innsbruck, which then replaced Meran as the capital of Tirol. The county of Tirol was generally held by a cadet line of the Austrian house, the count being almost an independent ruler. But the last princeling of this kind died in 1665, since which date Innsbruck and Tirol have been governed from Vienna. In 1552 Maurice of Saxony surprised and nearly took Innsbruck, almost capturing the emperor Charles V. himself, who escaped owing to a mutiny among Maurice’s troops. In the patriotic war of 1809, Innsbruck played a great part and suffered much, while in 1848, at the time of the revolution in Vienna, it joyfully received the emperor Ferdinand. (W. A. B. C.)
INNS OF COURT. The Inns of Court and Chancery are
voluntary non-corporate legal societies seated in London, having
their origin about the end of the 13th and the commencement
of the 14th century.
Dugdale (Origines Juridiciales) states that the learned in English law were anciently persons in holy orders, the justices of the king’s court being bishops, abbots and the like. But in 1207 the clergy were prohibited by canon from acting in the temporal courts. The result proving prejudicial to the interests of the community, a commission of inquiry was issued by Edward I. (1290), and this was followed up (1292) by a second commission, which among other things directed that students “apt and eager” should be brought from the provinces and placed in proximity to the courts of law now fixed by Magna Carta at Westminster (see Inn). These students were accordingly located in what became known as the Inns of Court and Chancery, the latter designated by Fortescue (De Laudibus) as “the earliest settled places for students of the law,” the germ of what Sir Edward Coke subsequently spoke of as our English juridical university. In these Inns of Court and Chancery, thus constituted, and corresponding to the ordinary college, the students, according to Fortescue, not only studied the laws and divinity, but further learned to dance, sing and play instrumental music, “so that these hostels, being nurseries or seminaries of the court, were therefore called Inns of Court.”
Stow in his Survey (1598) says: “There is in and about this city a whole university, as it were, of students, practisers or pleaders and judges of the laws of this realm”; and he goes on to enumerate the several societies, fourteen in number, then existing, corresponding nearly with those recognized in the present day, of which the Inns of Court, properly so-called, are and always have been four, namely Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple and Gray’s Inn. To these were originally attached as subordinate Inns of Chancery, Furnival’s Inn, Thavie’s Inn (to Lincoln’s Inn), Clifford’s Inn, Clement’s Inn (to the Inner Temple), New Inn (to the Middle Temple), Staple’s Inn, Barnard’s Inn (to Gray’s Inn), but they were cut adrift by the older Inns and by the middle of the 18th century had ceased to have any legal character (vide infra). In addition to these may be specified Serjeant’s Inn, a society composed solely of serjeants-at-law, which ceased to exist in 1877. Besides the Inns of Chancery above enumerated, there were others, such as Lyon’s Inn, which was pulled down in 1868, and Scrope’s Inn and Chester or Strand Inn, spoken of by Stow, which have long been removed, and the societies to which they belonged have disappeared. The four Inns of Court stand on a footing of complete equality, no priority being conceded to or claimed by one inn over another. Their jurisdictions and privileges are equal, and upon affairs of common interest the benchers of the four inns meet in conference. From the earliest times there has been an interchange of fellowship between the four houses; nevertheless the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, and the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, have maintained a closer alliance.
The members of an Inn of Court consist of benchers, barristers and students. The benchers are the senior members of the society, who are invested with the government of the body to which they belong. They are more formally designated “masters of the bench,” are self-elected and unrestricted as to numbers. Usually a member of an inn, on attaining the rank of king’s counsel, is invited to the bench. Other members of long standing are also occasionally chosen, but no member by becoming a king’s counsel or by seniority of standing acquires the right of being nominated a bencher. The benchers vary in number from twenty in Gray’s Inn to seventy and upwards in Lincoln’s Inn and the Inner Temple. The powers of the benchers are practically without limit within their respective societies; their duties, however, are restricted to the superintendence and management of the concerns of the inn, the admission of candidates as students, the calling of them to the bar and the exercise of discipline generally over the members. The meetings of the benchers are variously denominated a “parliament” in the Inner and Middle Temples, a “pension” in Gray’s Inn and a “council” in Lincoln’s Inn. The judges of the superior courts are the visitors of the inns, and to them alone can an appeal be had when either of the societies refuses to call a member to the bar, or to reinstate in his privileges a barrister who has been disbarred for misconduct. The presiding or chief officer is the treasurer, one of the benchers, who is elected annually to that dignity. Other benchers fulfil the duties of master of the library, master of the walks or gardens, dean of the chapel and so forth, while others are readers, whose functions are referred to below.
The usages of the different inns varied somewhat formerly in regard both to the term of probationary studentship enforced and to the procedure involved in a “call” to the bar by which the student is converted into the barrister. In the present day the entrance examination, the course of study and the examinations to be passed on the completion of the curriculum are identical and common to all the inns (see English Law). When once called to the bar, no hindrance beyond professional etiquette limits a barrister’s freedom of action; so also members may on application to the benchers, and on payment of arrears of dues (if any), leave the society to which they belong, and thus cease altogether to be members of the bar likewise. A member of an Inn of Court retains his name on the lists of his inn for life by means of a small annual payment varying from £1 to £5, which at one or two of the inns is compounded for by a fixed sum taken at the call to the bar.
The ceremony of the “call” varies in detail at the different inns. It takes place after dinner (before dinner at the Middle Temple, which is the only inn at which students are called in
