a greater part of the garrison were on a military tour, and concealing themselves in thick woods to the southward of Dublin, unexpectedly entered, plundered the Exchequer, burnt the records, and slew the unarmed and unprepared inhabitants.
By the preceding event legal practitioners were driven within the walls of the city, and superior courts of justice held at the Castle, and even at Cariow, which was then considered an impregnable fortress on the southern frontier of the English pale. There fortunately arose in the profession one of those eminent men, who with unerring certainty arrest the applause of posterity and appeal to its impartial verdict from the interested neglect of cotempomries. This is the true triumph of personal merit; what bean its fleeting image cannot be long upheld by flattery or power, Whilst the sterling stamp meliorates by time and becomes immortal. In this memorable class Sir Robert Preston, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Edward III, deserves a settled station. Profoundly learned in his profession, and inflexibly just in the exercise of judicial duty, wealth, power and rank were only estimable in his eye, as they administered to the luxury of doing good. This honest, brave and enlightened patriot disinterestedly assigned to the legal body his residence, which thence took the name of Preston's Inn. It occupied that space of ground whereon the Royal Exchange and adjacent houses in Parliament Street now stands and extended very near to the Liffey.
In this position judges and barristers were lodged for two centuries, until state policy rendered it inconvenient to hold the courts of justice within the Castle, as these chambers were required for military residents and their necessary acconunodation. This circumstance led to the measure which was adopted in 1542.
The termly sessions of the superior courts were removed to the dissolved monastery of the Dominicans on the northern side of the Liffey. The private apartments of that wealthy brotherhood often hospitably accommodated illustrious foreigners, and were deemed suitable to the legal establishment. Thus, as
