An Illustrated History of Gray's Inn

The History tells the story of the Inn over seven centuries from 1294 when Sir Reginald de Grey purchased the lease of the old Manor of Purpoole.

It covers the Golden Age of the Inn when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne:-

• the part members of the Inn played in the contest between Charles I and Parliament (including their roles at his trial),
• the Restoration,
• the eighteenth century (when the Inn ceased to teach law students and Call to the Bar became a formality),
• the sorry state of the Inn when Charles Dickens was working as an office boy,
• the near demise of the Inn later in the nineteenth century and how its fortunes were revived and transformed by such great members as Sir John Holker and F E Smith
• and how the Inn became (as it remains today) a society of lawyers from all over the Commonwealth.

The chapters on the twentieth century cover the destruction of much of the Inn in the Blitz and its rebuilding (with first priority being given to the resumption of life in Hall). The chapter ‘Recent Times’ looks at the changes over the last 50 years and the parts played by the men and women who have created the Inn as it is today.