Lincoln's Inn

An inn of court. See Inns oF Cou Rt.

One of the inns of court within which the chancery courts are held, with the exception of the rolls court, which sits in Bolls Yard, Chancery Lane. Maz Uy Sf W. LINE; LINEA. 1. These words, the first English, the second its Latin equivalent, are used in the law of relationship and descent to signify the connection between persons who are descended from a common ancestor; the course of descent; the order in which relatives stand towards each other. Several forms are mentioned. The direct line is composed of persons immediately descending one from another. An individual being particularly in view, called in the language of the subject the propositus, his father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, great-grandfather and great-grandmother, and so on, upwards, are his relatives in the direct line ascending; wh Ue his son and daughter, grandson and granddaughter, and so on, downwards, are his relatives in the direct line descending. Again, the paternal line is that course of relationship which is traced through the father of the propositus, and the maternal, that which is traced through his mother. The expression collateral line involves the consideration of two direct lines. Thus the propositus and his nephew are related in the collateral line. The course is traced from the propositus backwards in one direct line to the grandfather, thence downwards by a direct line, but through another son of the grandfather, to the nephew in question. 2. Line is also used in law, as in the vernacular, for boundary; the conceived limit of lands covered by one title upon any one of its sides; and as a unit of measurement, being the one-twelfth of versal! The right line is always preferred to the collateral. It is a rule of descent that the lineal ancestors, in infnitum, of any person deceased shall represent their ancestor; that is, shall stand in the same place as the person himself would have done had he been living.