d looked westwards upon green fields, whilst its eastern wall
abutted on New Street--a thoroughfare that was subsequently called
Chancellor's Lane, and has for many years been known as Chancery Lane.
This palace had been the residence of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, who
conferred upon the building the name which it still bears. The earl died
in 1310, some seventeen years before Edward III.'s accession; and
Thynne, the antiquary, was of opinion that no considerable period
intervened between Henry Lacy's death and the entry of the lawyers. In
the same century, the lawyers took possession of the Temple. The exact
date of their entry is unknown; but Chaucer's verse enables the student
to fix, with sufficient preciseness, the period when the more noble
apprentices of the law first occupied the Temple as tenants of the
Knight's Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who obtained a grant of
the place from Edward III.[21] The absence of fuller particulars
concerning the early history of the legal Templars, is ordinarily and
with good reason attributed to Wat Tyler's rebels, who destroyed the
records of the fraternity by fire. From roof to basement, beginning with
the tiles, and working downwards, the mob destroyed the principal houses
of the college; and when they had burnt all the archives on which they
could lay hands, they went off and expended their remaining fury on
other buildings, of which the Knights of St. John were proprietors.

The same men who saw the lawyers take possession of the Temple on the
northern banks of the Thames, and of the Earl of Lincoln's palace in New
Street, saw them also make a third grand settlement. The manor of
Portepoole, or Purpoole, became the property of the Grays of Wilton, in
the twenty-second year of Edward I.; and on its green fields, lying
north of Holborn, a society of lawyers established a college which still
retains the name of the ancient proprietors of the soil. Concerning the
exact date of its institution, the uncertainty is even greater than
that which obscures the foundation of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn; but
antiquaries have agreed to assign the creation of Gray's Inn, as an
hospicium for the entertainment of lawyers, to the time of Edward III.

The date at which the Temple lawyers split up into two separate
societies, is also unknown; but assigning the division to some period
posterior to Wat Tyler's insurrection, Dugdale says, "But,
notwithstanding, this spoil by the rebels