The Honorable Society of King's Inns () is the "Inn of Court" for the Bar of Ireland. Established in 1541, King's Inns is Ireland's oldest school of law and one of Ireland's significant historical environments. The Benchers of King's Inns award the degree of barrister-at-law necessary to qualify as a barrister be called to the bar in Ireland. As well as training future and qualified barristers, the school extends its reach to a diverse community of people from legal and non-legal backgrounds offering a range of accessible part-time courses in specialist areas of the law. King's Inns is also a centre of excellence in promoting the use of the Irish language in the law. History The society was granted a royal charter by King Henry VIII in 1541, 51 years before Trinity College Dublin was founded, making it one of the oldest professional and educational institutions in the English-speaking world. The founders named their society in honour of King Henry VIII of England and his newly established Kingdom of Ireland. It secured a lease of lands, originally called "Blackfriars", at Inns Quay on the north bank of the River Liffey in Dublin. It was reconstituted in 1607, having been inactive for some time. In 1790 the Inns Quays site was acquired for the purposes of the Four Courts; the foundation stone at the present building at the top of Henrietta Street was laid on 1 August 1800, with James Gandon being commissioned as the architect. The building was completed by his pupil Henry Aaron Baker. Turn Again Lane, adjacent to the grounds, was renamed King's Inns Street. From almost the moment that King's Inns was founded, Irishmen who wished to practise as barristers were required to attend the English Inns of Court in London, and that requirement stayed in place until the late nineteenth century. Only from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards were courses of legal education provided at King's Inns. King's Inns initially hoped the 1920–1922 partition of Ireland would not end its all-island remit, and it set up a "Committee of Fifteen" Northern Ireland benchers in 1922. These sought more independence and separatism was fuelled by King's Inns' 1925 admission as a barrister of Kevin O'Higgins, who had not sat the exams but was Minister for Justice in the Irish Free State. In 1926 a separate inn of court in Northern Ireland catered for the Bar