INN, a place appointed for the entertainment and relief of travellers.
Inns are licensed and regulated by justices of the peace, who oblige the landlord to enter into recognizances for keeping good order. If a person who keeps a common inn, refuses to receive a traveller into his house as a guest, or to find him victuals and lodging on his tendering a reasonable price for them, he is liable to an action of damages, and may be indicted and fined at the king's suit. The rates of all commodities sold by inn-keepers, according to our ancient laws, may be assessed: and inn-keepers not selling their hay, oats, beans, &c. and all manner of victuals at reasonable prices, without taking any thing for litter, may be fined and imprisoned, &c. by 21 Jac. I. c. 21. Where an inn-keeper harbours thieves, persons of infamous character, or suffers any disorders in his house, or sets up a new inn where there is no need of one, to the hindrance of ancient and well governed inns, he is indictable and fineable: and by statute, such inn may be suppressed. Action upon the case lies against any inn-keeper, if a theft be committed on his guest by a servant of the inn, or any other person not belonging to the guest; though it is otherwise where the guest is not a traveller, but one of the same town or village, for there the inn-keeper is not chargeable; nor is the master of a private tavern answerable for a robbery committed on his guest: it is said, that even tho' the travelling guest does not deliver his goods, &c. into the inn-keeper's possession, yet if they are stolen, he is chargeable. An inn-keeper is not answerable for any thing out of his inn, but only for such as are within it; yet, where he of his own accord puts the guest's horse to grass, and the horse is stolen, he is answerable, he not having the guest's orders for putting such horse to grass. The inn-keeper may justify
the stopping of the horse, or other thing of his guest, for his reckoning, and may retain the same till it be paid. Where a person brings his horse to an inn, and leaves him in the stable, the inn-keeper may detain him till such time as the owner pays for his keeping; and if the horse eats out as much as he is worth, after a reasonable appraisement made, he may sell the horse and pay himself: but when a guest brings several horses to an inn, and afterwards takes them all away except one, this horse so left may not be sold for payment of the debt for the others; for every horse is to be sold, only to make satisfaction for what is due for his own meat.