2 - The Metropolitan Inns

Summary

The second chapter considers the Inns of Court in their relationship to the broader city, both the people who lived, worked, or visited central London and the governing bodies responsible for regulating the capital. The chapter highlights the societies’ struggle to maintain their local autonomy while fulfilling obligations to the public good and, increasingly, to public opinion. The Inns were geographically and legally separate from the rest of the capital, but they connected with the central London populace via efforts to promote citizens’ physical, moral, and cultural well-being. At the same time, the societies clashed with newly created, centralized metropolitan bodies designed to order the metropolis in the name of public health. Disputes between the Inns and entities like the Metropolitan Board of Works represented a conflict between an ancient system of local authority and processes of urban rationalization, a tension that defined metropolitan modernity in Britain. As competing strains within liberalism pushed institutions to engage in philanthropy in ways that could undermine institutional authority, the Inns found themselves unable to fully salvage their autonomy.