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The society occupied the Inn as tenants of the
Knights Hospitaller until 1540, when the possessions of that order
were vested in the Crown (32 Hen. VIII, c. 24). No pre-1540 leases
have survived, and it may be that the Inn was held under some kind
of informal tenancy at will; even after the society attorned to
the Crown in 1540, no written lease appears to have been drawn up.
In 1608 King James I conveyed the Temple in fee simple to the benchers
of the two societies, 'to serve for all time to come for the accommodation
and education of the students and practitioners of laws of the realm'.
The property was granted in free and common socage, to be held by
fealty alone as of the manor of East Greenwich, for a rent of £10
a year from each inn. The freehold has since then been held by successive
groups of benchers as trustees for the two inns. The rent was purchased
from the Crown in 1675, subject to a life interest belonging to
Queen Catherine of Braganza, and was finally extinguished by the
queen's death in 1705.
No boundary between the two societies was specified
in the letters patent. The boundary in 1608 rested on usage, and
has since been adjusted by deed of partition (1732), by arbitration
(in the 1870s), and by mutual agreements.
The Temple, though in London (unlike Gray's Inn
and Lincoln's Inn, which were in Middlesex), has always been outside
the jurisdiction of the city. On two unseemly occasions, in 1555
and 1669, when the lord mayor improperly entered the Inner Temple
with his swordbearer (a right exercised only in the city), younger
members of the society attempted forcibly to pull down the sword.
The Inner Temple remains to this day a separate local authority.
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