old hall capable of containing so great a number, whereupon they were forced to divide themselves. A new hall was then erected which is now the Junior Temple Hall, whereunto divers of those who before took their repast and diet in the old hall resorted, and in process of time became a distinct and divided society." From the inquisition taken 10. E. III. A.D. 1337, it appears that in the time of the Knights Templars there were two halls in the Temple, so that it is not likely that a fresh one was built. One of these halls, the present Inner Temple Hall, had been assigned, the year previous to the taking of that inquisition, to the prior and brethren of the Hospital of Saint John, together with the church, cloisters, &c, as before mentioned, whilst the other hall remained in the hands of the crown, and was not granted to the Hospitallers until 13 Ε. ΠΙ. A. D. 1340. It was probably soon after this period that the Hospitallers conceded the use of both halls to the professors of the law, and these last, from dining apart and being attached to different halls, at last separated into two societies, as at present. " Although there be two several societies, yet in sundry places they are promiscuously lodged together without any metes or bounds to distinguish them, and the ground rooms in some places belong to the new house, and the upper rooms to the old one, a manifest argument that both made at first but one house, nor did they either before or after this division claim by several leases, but by one entire grant. And as they took their diet apart, so likewise were they stationed apart in tbe church, viz. those of the Middle Temple on the left hand side as you go therein, and those of the old house on the right hand side, and so it remains between them at this day."* Burton, the antiquary, who wrote in the reign of queen Elizabeth, speaks of this " old house" (the Inner Temple) as " the « MS. in Bib. Int. Temp. No. 17. fo. 408.