Definition
In English legal history, the Temple refers to two of the Inns of Court in London — the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple — both located on the Strand in the area historically occupied by the Knights Templar. These institutions, alongside Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, constitute the four bodies authorized to call candidates to the Bar of England and Wales. Membership in one of the Inns of Court is a prerequisite to practice as a barrister.
The broader area known as the Temple district encompasses the buildings, gardens, and grounds shared or divided between the Inner and Middle Temple, which continue to function as professional organizations, landlords, and governing bodies for their respective barrister communities.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A house of worship, particularly one dedicated to a polytheistic faith, to Jewish practice (especially non-Orthodox synagogues), or to LDS religious observance. Also used loosely for any place regarded as sacred or devoted to a particular purpose.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Primarily, a place of worship; a building dedicated to religious services. Webster's also notes a secondary mechanical sense — a contrivance in a loom for keeping the web stretched transversely — entirely unrelated to any legal meaning.
The legal use of Temple diverges entirely from the religious sense. In English legal sources, Temple almost always refers to the London inns of court, not to any building of worship. A researcher encountering the term in a legal context should not default to the common meaning.
Common Confusion
Temple is sometimes loosely used in legal writing to refer to the Knights Templar themselves, to the Outer Temple (a third, historically distinct portion of the original Templar property at Essex House, never converted into an inn of court), or generically to the district of London surrounding the inns. These usages are informal and imprecise. The formal legal institutions are the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple only. The Outer Temple never became an inn of court and carries no formal legal significance in the governance of the bar.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in English legal history, legal biography, or the history of legal education will encounter Temple frequently — and ambiguously. Key navigational points:
Period sensitivity matters. Before the dissolution of the Knights Templar (early 14th century), Temple in a legal document may refer to the order itself, its property holdings, or its legal privileges — not the inns of court, which did not emerge in their recognizable form until the later 14th and 15th centuries. Dating a source before drawing conclusions is essential.
The Inner/Middle distinction is not merely geographical. The Inner Temple and Middle Temple are separate legal corporations with distinct governance, benchers, halls, chapels, and historical records. A barrister's membership in one versus the other can matter when tracing professional biography or understanding historical affiliations. Do not treat them as interchangeable.
The Outer Temple appears in historical sources but has no surviving institutional counterpart. Citations to the Outer Temple refer to the Essex House portion of the original Templar property, absorbed into the surrounding neighborhood rather than into legal professional life. Its appearance in a document signals property history, not bar membership.
American sources occasionally use Temple loosely when discussing English legal institutions, sometimes without distinguishing Inner from Middle. These references require verification against English sources before being relied upon.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in agreement on the core definition: the Temple refers to the London inns of court that occupy the former dwelling of the Knights Templar, divided into the Inner and Middle Temple, with the Outer Temple (Essex House) noted as a third portion of the original property that was not converted into an inn.
Black's (2nd Ed.) is slightly more complete, explicitly noting the Outer Temple's relationship to Essex House. Bouvier dispenses with independent treatment altogether, redirecting the reader to INNS OF COURT — a sensible cross-reference that signals the term carries no independent substantive legal doctrine; its importance is institutional and historical rather than doctrinal.
Neither historical dictionary provides detail on the governance structures of the inns, their role in legal education, or their contemporary regulatory function. For research purposes, the dictionary definitions are entry points only. The historical record of the inns themselves — their own archives, English legal history treatises, and histories of the English bar — is the necessary next stop.
Jurisdictional Note
The Temple and its inns of court are English institutions with no formal counterpart in American, Scottish, or other common-law jurisdictions. American legal education absorbed no equivalent structure; the bar call function passed instead to state bar authorities. References to the Temple in American legal sources are historical or comparative, not operative.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Inns of Court; Knights Templar (Legal History); Legal Education, History of