It is not often that one is invited to give a Millennium Lecture, and the opportunity will not arise again in my lifetime, so I am grateful to Gray's Inn for presenting me with this challenge. I was asked to start off in a domestic vein by saying something about our inn, which is old enough to have lived through more than half of the last millennium. Indeed, it is well over 600 years since the inns of court came into existence in the reign of Edward III. So this may be a fitting moment to pause and take stock of that vast stretch of time. Since I reckon my allowance to be five seconds per annum, I shall have to cut some corners. But I shall begin at the beginning and accelerate towards the end.

Where, then, is the beginning? I have always thought it highly satisfactory to belong to a body whose origins are lost in prehistory, and I am glad to say that I am not yet in a position to deprive posterity of the same sense of mystery. Unlike a college at Cambridge, whose birthday is recorded in its charter of foundation and whose gestation can be traced in the founder's travaux préparatoires, we have no founder, no incorporation, no early benefactions, no certain origin. Not that lawyers are short of theories about such matters; but as lawyers we also know how to test theories against evidence.