It seems almost a contradiction in terms nowadays to speak of an unincorporated university, yet some of our best lawyers used to refer to the inns of court and chancery as the ‘Third University of England’. The word ‘university’ in this context was not being used as a legal term of art, but was intended to convey the same sentiment as Fortescue intended when he wrote (in about 1470) that the inns formed a studium publicum more suited to the study of English law than any university. For this lawyers' university or studium was unusual, if not unique, in having virtually no existence as a body. Its constituent colleges were autonomous and formed a university only in the sense that they performed similar functions, in close geographical proximity, under the general supervision of the king's council or the judges. The inns had no recorded foundations or written constitutions, and were never incorporated, either individually or collectively. Most writers on corporate personality have treated them as awkward anomalies, to be mentioned in asides or footnotes as exceptions to the usual course of things. Even the more practical law books treat the legal status of these societies as a matter of speculation. Yet why should lawyers, of all people, have been a law unto themselves? Their inns have played a prominent part in the history of the nation. Can we believe that they were denied privileges granted not only to academics and merchants but even to scriveners and parish clerks?