It remains a well-known City of London landmark, where Lloyd's Bank is situated, on the opposite side of Holborn Circus from Ely Place.
In 1349[citation needed] John Thavie, an armourer based in the parish of St Andrew's, Holborn, "left a considerable Estate towards the support of the fabric forever" of that church, a legacy which survived the English Reformation.
The will's statement uses the past tense and we know from the records of the inn that the community of clerks had moved to the neighbouring house of John de Besvile; it is this site that is associated with the title of 'Thavie's Inn' and the assumption is that the transfer of that name indicates the later lawyers association as having started in the original Thavy premises.
[3] There is a reference, after the relocation but before 1400, to the clerks at Besvile's house being addressed as "treshonorable, tresage compagne de David Inn in Holborn" ie.
The Templars relocated to the present Temple area in 1161, selling the first property to Robert de Chesney Bishop of Lincoln as his 'London' palace.
In 1369, the Benedictine cleric, the Abbot of Malmesbury, also required a London establishment for his affairs and the Benedictine Order acquired "Lyncolnesynne", that of one Thomas of Lincoln, who was a Serjeant at law, and thus a local landlord unrelated to the ecclesiastical or lay magnates bearing a similar title/name.
Thavy's property itself was, however, a sub-division of Earl Henry de Lacy's manor so that the association of lawyers may have acquired their collective name from any informal affinity with the leading magnate's local interests.