Inns of Court:
All through the morning I did some shopping -- as the after Christmas sales have started.
Then I took a London Walks Tour of The Inns of Court -- a very nice tours showing the ins of courts at telling about their importance.
The tour goes through Lincoln Inn where Margaret Thatchair is member, and so were D�israeli and Cromwell. From there we went to see Grace Inn where Sir Francis Bacon was a member, and then we went to Staple Inn which is no longer an operating Inn of Court as it was a Chancery Court Inn (and those were cancelled). Then we went to see Inner Temple Inn, passing by a shop called Ede & Ravencroft which sells wigs and gowns since 1689, and passing through Cary St. -- which is the street behind the civil court house, and through which the people in debt tried to escape their creditors (Hence the expression "Reaching Cary Street").
Temple Inn was originally belonging to the Templers, but as they were abiding to the Pope and not the king, King Henry III had them executed, and turned their property to law schools.
In the Middle Temple Inn Dining Hall started the War of the Roses -- when the Duke of York pulled a red rose, and the Duke of Lancaster pulled a white rose (or vice versa).
In the same dining room ate Robert Louis Stevenson, and he got an idea for a book from reading the coats arms on the colored windows -- one coat of arms belonging to a knight named Jackal and the other to a knight named Hyde.
After the tour I took the Tube to Covent Garden (see Day 16) and there I went to ** The London Transport Museum -- which has a great collection of old busses and also shows the development of the Tube system -- which was very interesting.
Links: London walks
The London Transport Museum
The Tube
Start: Holborn Tube (Central Line or Piccadilli line)
End: Covent Garden (Piccadilly Line)