bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Despenser War in Glamorgan
Authors: Davies J. Conway
Published: March 2007

As an isolated episode the Despenser war is of little interest and less importance, but taken as a characteristic expression of baronial opposition and royal policy as controlled by favourites, it assumes a position of considerable importance in the reign of Edward II. The events in Wales during the reign have a real and intimate connection with the great crises in the struggle between the King and his barons. This was to some extent inevitable. By crushing the last traces of independence in Wales, Edward I had removed a dangerous enemy of the English Crown. He failed to effect the corollary that such a fact involved. The marcher privileges remained undiminished, and the marcher energies which could no longer find employment in the struggle against the Welsh, sought a new direction in the fertile field of English politics. It was in the troubles that followed the divisions of the Gloucester inheritance among the co-heiresses that the real expression of baronial feeling in the marches was made, and the real strength of the baronial power realised. Questions of great constitutional importance were involved in the dispute. The present intention is to give merely the chronicle of events which led up to the outbreak and a summary of its immediate results.
A Suggestion for the Publication of the Correspondence of Queen Elizabeth with the Russian Czars
Authors: Lubimenko Inna
Published: March 2007

The correspondence which forms the subject of this communication begins on April 25, 1561, with a letter from the Queen to Czar Ivan the Terrible, and ends in April 1603 with a letter from Czar Boris to Elizabeth. The frequent intercourse between England and Russia during this period has produced in forty-two years probably more than a hundred letters. Of these ninety-eight have been identified; others are mentioned which cannot be found, probably destroyed by accident in the course of the last three centuries. In any case the considerable amount of letters which we possess is deserving of notice. Some of them are simply short safe-conducts given by the Queen to Englishmen going to Russia, but these are few, the great mass of the correspondence consisting of long letters exchanged by the monarchs on important commercial and diplomatic subjects.
Presidential Address
Authors: Oman C. W. C.
Published: March 2007

Ever since recorded history begins, and probably for untold centuries before, a never-ending strife between the East and the West has been in progress, and the tide of conquest and invasion has been mounting eastward or westward, only to reach its high-water mark, stand still for a moment, and then commence slowly or quickly toretire. The writers of the old classical world of antiquitysaw this clearly enough. Herodotus, the father of all European historians, began his famous book with a tale of legendary raids and counter-raids between Europe and Asia, and traced down from them the great war of Greek and Persian which had formed the all-engrossing interest of his own youth.
Debates in the House of Lords, 1628
Authors: Relf H.
Published: March 2007

In searching through the Bodleian last April for debates in the House of Commons during the period of the sixteentwenties, I came across a volume of debates in the House of Lords. My attention was attracted by the subject-matter, for the volume was taken up almost entirely with the Lords' discussion of the Petition of Right during the month of May, 1628. The more I read, the more I was impressed with the amount of information on that important subject added by these notes. From the handwriting, the notes were easily identified as those of Henry Elsing, Clerk of the Parliaments. Then I remembered that earlier in the winter, in going over manuscript material in the Petyt Collection, I had there noted two volumes of debates in the House of Lords. Upon a comparison of handwriting, I found that those volumes were also the work of Henry Elsing. One of the volumes was for 1621, but the other covered the session of 1628 from the beginning to the point where the Bodleian volume begins. Here was more material on the Petition of Right. But for the time being my interest swerved from that particular subject to a more general consideration of the value of my discoveries, and to the possibility it opened up of carrying on a work of editing begun by Samuel Rawson Gardiner.
Devonshire Ports in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Authors: Mace Frances A.
Published: March 2007

The reputation won by Devonshire ports and seamen under Elizabeth has tended to obscure their growth and achievements in the later Middle Ages when a solid foundation of maritime enterprise was laid. A study of this growth gains interest from the characteristic differences of north and south and from marks of individuality such as the steep and rocky entrance to Dartmouth, the treacherous and sand-barred estuary of the Exe, the steeply shelving beaches where quays are even now unnecessary, and the marshy valleys which sometimes form their background.
Presidential Address: Some Mediæval Conceptions of Ancient History
Authors: Oman C. W. C.
Published: March 2007

It has been the laudable and most natural custom of my predecessors in this Presidential Chair to deliver as their swan-song of farewell to the Society a prophecy or forecast of the progress of Historical Study in the future, setting forth the many fields of historical knowledge that remain yet unconquered, and describing how best the attack on the tcrra incognita may be conducted. This is a worthy ambition: and no doubt such addresses may, from time to time, have set some newly-joined member of the Society on the track of some line of research where his energies have been well employed. But being myself too modest to assume for your benefit the rôle of prophet and guide, I have thought it worth while to-day, for the sake of variety, to ask you to look backward rather than forward, and to contemplate history as it presented itself to our ancestors, rather than as it will present itself to our successors.
The Council of the West
Authors: Skeel Caroline A. J.
Published: March 2007

Prof. Baldwin has traced the history of the King's Council down to the year 1540 when “the chief problems which affected the institution during the middle ages were practically settled.” There was no longer danger of subservience to private interests; on the contrary, the Council was the means whereby the Tudor monarchy performed its work. So successful was government by Council that it was applied to districts where special difficulties existed; local Councils worked in close connection with the Privy Council.
The Norse Settlements in the British Islands
Authors: Bugge Alexander
Published: March 2007

I Esteem it a very great honour indeed to be allowed to lecture before this learned Society, which among its members numbers so many eminent men.

You will probably think that my subject lies far out of the way and is only of very small importance to the study of English history.—But it is my proud conviction that the Norsemen, my ancestors, also have contributed to the moulding of the English nation and of the British Empire. These times, however, lie far back. It is now nearly 900 years ago since Vikings' fleets used to land on the shores of the British Islands and many centuries since the tongue of the Norsemen was spoken here, except in the far away Orkneys and Shetland. Nearly everything that could remind us of them has disappeared. Those times are long ago forgotten when the Scandinavian peoples were feared by other nations, and were of some consequence in European politics. Since then the British nation has spread its sway all over the world, and its destinies lie not in Europe only, but beyond the seas. It is therefore not to be wondered that the English have forgotten their Norse ancestors. There was, however, a time when the fortunes of the British Islands were closely intertwined with those of Northern Europe, a time when these Islands and Denmark, Norway and Sweden seemed destined to form part of one great empire and had comparatively little to do with the outside world.
Germany in the Time of George I
Authors: Chance J. F.
Published: March 2007

The constitutional form of the German Empire of two hundred years ago was that of to-day. A band of sovereign states; an emperor at their head, Roman in name but German in reality; a Reichstag, or diet of the empire; imperial courts of justice, Reichskammergericht and Reichshofrat, or Aulic Council; an army of general contribution. Really, nothing could be more different than the Germany of Charles VI from that of Bismarck's creation. The watchword of the latter is efficiency, the mark of the institutions of the old empire was their inefficiency. Rather it was the Germany of which Bismarck got rid, the Germany whose chief state still was Austria. That was changed in form, but little in essentials. To have a cipher emperor, or none, made little difference, and if nine-tenths of the 330 sovereign members of the old empire had been suppressed, its destinies were always in the hands of the few greater states. Now there is a real emperor, a real Reichstag, ordered administration of justice, a military system the most perfect in the world. In the eighteenth century the emperor, as such, was a figurehead, the diet a mockery, the law-courts utterly incompetent, the army, when it could be assembled, a shame and a disgrace. Soldiers there were in plenty, and of the best, but their masters preferred to earn money by hiring them out to foreign powers. There was no Zollverein to remove the shackles from internal trade and unify commercial interest. The imperial dignity was elective, not hereditary; foreign kings might aspire to it. But the main difference was the absence from the minds of all, saving a few philosophers, of any sense of German nationality or unity.
Germany and the French Revolution
Authors: Gooch G. P.
Published: March 2007

During the years immediately preceding the French Revolution Germany presented a curious spectacle of political decrepitude and intellectual rejuvenescence. The Holy Roman Empire, of which Voltaire caustically remarked that it was neither holy nor Roman nor an Empire, was afflicted with creeping paralysis. Its wheels continued to revolve; but the machinery was rusty and the output was small. ‘No Curtius,’ remarked Justus Möser, ‘leaps into the abyss for the preservation of the Imperial system.’ The prolonged duel between Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa destroyed whatever shadowy sentiment of unity had survived the wars of religion, and the short but stormy reign of Joseph II revealed to the world that the Imperial dignity had sunk into the tool and plaything of the house of Hapsburg. The Fürstenbund formally registered the emergence of a rival claimant for the hegemony of central Europe. But the springtime of Prussian greatness was merely the reflection of her ruler's dazzling personality. Mirabeau, who knew them both, described Frederick as all mind and his nephew all body. His death left Germany without a leader or a hero. Among the countless rulers who owed a nominal allegiance to the Emperor a few men of capacity and conscience, such as Ferdinand of Brunswick, Karl August of Weimar and Karl Friedrich of Baden, could be found; but the general level of character and intellect was low, and the scandals of courts and courtiers provoked disgust and indignation. The most docile people in Europe watched with impotent despair the orgies of the last Elector of Bavaria, the capricious tyranny of Karl Eugen of Württemberg, the insanity of Duke Karl of Zweibrücken, and the Byzantine decadence of the ecclesiastical Electors on the Rhine. On the eve of the Revolution the larger part of Germany was poor, ignorant, ill-governed and discontented.
The Influence of the Writings of Sir John Fortescue
Authors: Skeel Caroline A. J.
Published: March 2007

To trace the influence of writings is a task in which full attainment is impossible. Yet the attempt is worth making, especially when the writer under consideration was in some sort a pioneer, the first to write a constitutional treatise in the English language, and likewise the first, in all probability, to write a legal treatise for the benefit of English laymen. Few English lawyers can have had so varied a career as that of Sir John Fortescue. Born some time between 1390 and 1400, he lived to see the ‘unquiet time’ of Henry IV, the ‘victorious acts’ of Henry V, and the ‘troublous season’ of Henry VI, which ended in the overthrow of the Lancastrian dynasty, and the apparently firm establishment of the Yorkist line. In early manhood he became a serjeant-at-law; in 1442 he was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench; in 1443 he was sent on various special commissions; in the critical year 1450 he acted as spokesman of the Judges in relation to the trial of Suffolk, and four years later he delivered the Judges' opinion on the important case of Thorpe. During the early stages of the Wars of the Roses Fortescue was actively engaged in various extra-judicial duties; in 1461 he was present at the battle of Towton, and a few months later he fought against Edward IV at Ryton and Brancepeth. Between 1461 and 1463 he wrote the ‘De Natura Legis Naturae’ and various tracts on the succession question, and in 1463 he accompanied Queen Margaret and her son into exile in Flanders and France, where he remained till 1471. During his sojourn abroad he wrote the ‘De Laudibus Legum Angliae,’ and drew up memoranda on the political situation and a programme for the restored Lancastrian government. Fortescue took a prominent part in the conclusion of the agreement between Margaret and Warwick in 1470, and accompanied the queen and her son to England, landing at Weymouth on the very day of Warwick's overthrow and death at Barnet. Less than a month later he was taken prisoner at Tewkesbury, and Prince Edward was slain; before long Henry VI also died, and there was nothing before the loyal Lancastrian but to accept the clemency of the conqueror, Edward IV. His pardon passed the Great Seal, he was made a member of the King's Council, and before very long he obtained (1473) the reversal of his attainder and the restoration of his estates at the price—hard for a lawyer to pay—of refuting in writing the arguments he had formerly adduced against Edward's title. An interesting reference to this treatise is made by Coke.
The Sources Available for the Study of Mediaeval Economic History
Authors: Lipson E.
Published: March 2007

I propose to give an account of the sources available for the study of the Economic History of England in the Middle Ages. I shall confine myself entirely to the printed materials which have become accessible within recent years. The year 1900 is a convenient starting point, though I shall not make the dividing line too rigid. My purpose is mainly to call attention to the publications which have not been utilized by economic historians writing before the present century.
An Unedited Cely Letter of 1482
Authors: Malden Henry Elliot
Published: March 2007

Mr. Joseph Bain took the following letter out of the mass of the Cely correspondence, when he was making the Calendar of the Documents in the Public Record Office relating to Scotland. It is in the Calendar, vol. iv., Appendix 31. The original is now in Chancery Miscellanea, 22, 6/42. Owing to its removal it was not edited with the other Cely Letters in Camden Third Series, vol. i. Mr. Bain misdated it, and was not aware to whom it was addressed. I can clear up both these points; and the letter is reprinted to make the commentary intelligible. I have had to make some very trifling alterations from Mr. Bain's copy. The letter has no subscription. Mr. Bain attributed it, no doubt rightly, to George Cely. The hand and style agree, and the writer had a brother Richard. It was meant for the hands of Sir John Weston, Prior of the Knights of St. John in England. He was always ‘My lord’ to the Celys, who had coats of his livery, and lived near him.
Traces of Primitive Agricultural Organisation as Suggested by a Survey of the Manor of Martham, Norfolk (1101–1292.)
Authors: Hudson W.
Published: March 2007

Among the Surveys of the Manors of the Prior of Norwich contained in the volume known as Stow MS. 936 in the British Museum is one which has features of special and, it might even be said, of unique interest. It is the Survey of the Manor of Martham with which the series is concluded. The whole compilation, unfortunately, is in a defective condition. The first folio begins in the middle of a sentence under the heading ‘ham,’ the last syllable of the word ‘Hindringham,’ the beginning of which was on the preceding folio now lost. In other places also the record is abruptly broken off. The series was apparently commenced soon after the appointment of William de Kyrkeby to the Priory in 1272, and was continued at various dates, the survey of Martham being made in 4 Henry de Lakenham 1292.
The Establishment of the Great Farm of the English Customs
Authors: Newton A. P.
Published: March 2007

The English customs duties under the early Stewarts, and the many vexed constitutional questions involved in connection with them, furnished some of the bitterest subjects of controversy at the time, both in and out of Parliament, and constitutional historians have devoted much attention to them. The questions that have been debated in this connection, however, have been mainly of one kind, and have related mainly to the constitutional powers of the Crown and the proper application of mediæval precedents under changed conditions. But there is an entirely different standpoint from which the customs can be approached, that of their administration as an essential part of the revenue-producing system, and comparatively little attention has been devoted to this aspect of the subject. It is important from a purely English point of view, but it is also specially interesting to the investigator of the English background for the early period of American colonisation, since customs duties played such an important part in fostering the growth of Virginia and of other newly established colonies.
The Place of the Council in the Fifteenth Century
Authors: Plucknett Theodore F. T.
Published: March 2007

The purpose of the following essay is to form some estimate of the place occupied by the King’s Council in the political and administrative machinery of England during the eventful reigns of the Lancastrian and Yorkist Kings, while an attempt must also be made to discover the source of its power, to exhibit the means whereby it hoped to control the entire government, and to trace the fluctuations of its long conflict with the monarchy.
The Constitutional Development of South Africa
Authors: Amery Lieut-Colonel L. S.
Published: March 2007

The history of South Africa is the story of the disintegration and eventual reconstruction of a country essentially one in all the main features that make for political unity. It is, as Carlyle said of the United Kingdom, and with even more truth, ' one on the ground plan of the Universe,' a compact block of temperate territory jutting out from tropical Africa into the Southern Ocean. There is a coast fringe, nowhere of any size except in the East, where it belongs to Portugal and falls outside the scope of our story, and immediately round the Cape where it forms a little Italy, a region of orchards and vineyards, the seclusion of which from the life of the veld beyond may have accounted for many mistakes in the days when South Africa was governed from Cape Town. For the rest South Africa is a vast terraced plateau, greener and better watered towards its eastern edge, shading off towards sandy desert on the West, but singularly uniform in all its characteristics, and broken up by no serious natural barriers.
The Intrigue to Deprive The Earl of Essex of the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland
Authors: Pike Clement E.
Published: March 2007

In drawing your attention to an intrigue to deprive the Earl of Essex of the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland it may perhaps be worth while to say a few words about the dignity and emoluments of that office. At the period of which we are treating, the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland was regarded without question as the most exalted position which an English subject could obtain out of England. In England itself there was only one post, the Lord Treasurership, which surpassed it, and it may be questioned whether the sword of the Lord Lieutenant did not confer more power than the staff of the Lord Treasurer. The Lord Lieutenant directly represented the Crown in a land which, for centuries, no English monarch had visited. He had his Court, his guards; he was head of all the military force in the country. Lord Halifax, on one occasion, expressed disinclination for the post, because ‘he did not love,’ he said, ‘a new scene, nor to dine with a sound of trumpet and 36 dishes of meat on his table.’
Notes on the Agincourt Roll
Authors: Wylie J. Hamilton
Published: March 2007

If anyone were to ask where he ought to look for the Roll of Agincourt he would probably be told that he would find it in the ‘History of the Battle,’ published by Sir Harris Nicolas in 1827, in which there are seventy-two pages of printed matter containing ‘the names of the Dukes, Earls, Barons, Knights, Esquires, Servitours and others that wer withe the Excellent Prince King Henry the Fifte at the Battell of Agincourt’; and if he wanted to know (as which of us would not?) whether one of his ancestors took part in the fight he would look through that list and if he found the name he would probably say, ‘It's all right, he was there!’ but if he didn't he might say, ‘Rubbish! You mustn't expect me to be convinced by such a mass of confusion as that!’ Such a man's difficulty is the one that I want this learned society to look into this afternoon, and in venturing to set before you the dry bones of the skeleton of what is really a very complicated question I need not say that I am here to-day with the very greatest diffidence, for I expect that there are many experts present who will say of the contents of my paper that ‘that which is true is not new and—’ you know the other half of the epigram. I speak, therefore, under a natural feeling of stage fright such as seized upon Henry Buckle when he first faced a Royal Institution audience and felt inclined at the beginning to run away there and then, though I cannot venture to hope for the success he achieved before he sat down at the end. At the risk, however, of wandering among platitudes, I will, if you please, assume conventionally that some at least in this audience may be as ignorant of the main features of my problem as I was myself when I attempted to look into it several years ago. I was then seeking for such first-hand evidence as might still exist for the details of the campaign that ended with the great battle of St. Crispin's Day and whether there was any hope of getting on to firm ground in dealing with the conflicting statements as to the numbers and composition of the force with which Henry V set sail from Southampton in August 1415 and ten weeks later fought the wonderful fight that had such far-reaching effects on the course of the history, not only of our own country and of France, but on that of the whole of Western Europe.
The Possession of Cardigan Priory by Chertsey Abbey: A Study in some Mediæval Forgeries
Authors: Malden H. E.
Published: March 2007

The Abbey of Chertsey was among the earliest of the great monasteries of the south of England. Its foundation was ascribed to Earconwald bishop of London and Wulfhere, king of the Mercians in the seventh century, supported by Frithwald subregulus of Surrey, whose name is the only extant name of the kings of the Suthrige. The abbots of Benedictine Houses of royal foundation were, as a rule, lords of Parliament in later centuries. The abbot of Chertsey, though a mitred abbot, was not; perhaps the king of the Mercians, though certainly overlord at the time of all southern England, was not sufficiently like a king of England to be counted. The fact of the royal foundation is sufficiently attested by Bede; about the circumstantial accounts of its endowment a little doubt may be entertained. But Chertsey was a rich and an important house, and the abbots occupied distinguished positions. Abbot Hugh accompanied Ralph archbishop of Canterbury to Rome, after 1114, in the capacity of physician, when the archbishop went as an ambassador in the controversy concerning the relative positions of the sees of Canterbury and York.
The Rise of Gaius Julius Caesar, with an Account of his Early Friends, Enemies, and Rivals
Authors: Howorth Henry H.
Published: March 2007

In my previous paper I brought the story of Caesar down to the year when he returned home from the East after Sulla's death, and started a new double career—first as one of the college of pontiffs, and secondly as a tribune; the fact of his having had both a religious and secular status at this time no doubt greatly extended his influence and increased the number of useful people with whom he had personal ties. His appointment as a pontiff on the death of his maternal uncle was due, no doubt, to the antecedents of his mother's family, whose ancestral connection with priestly functions he inherited. The Aurelian ‘gens,’ which was plebeian in status, according to Festus professed to derive their family name from their sacerdotal duties, and particularly from the worship of the sun, which in the Sabine language was called ‘ausel,’ a word related to the ‘ozul’ of the Salian hymns and the Etruscan ‘Uzil,’ the god of light Festus argues that the Aurelii were at first called Auselii, like the Valerii and Papinii were respectively called Valesii and Papisii. It further seems to follow from these facts that Caesar, on his mother's side, belonged to a Sabine stock.
The Eclipse of the Yorkes
Authors: Williams Basil
Published: March 2007

In one of his greatest novels Balzac describes the sudden accession to fortune of César Birotteau, the hairdresser, and his lamentable fall, due to overweening confidence and neglect of the business to which he owed his elevation. It is the tragedy of the man who rests too long upon his laurels, and has failed to learn life's lesson, that a breathing space to prepare for further effort is the only rest possible for one who would not slip back in the struggle. Such tragedies are common, though it requires a Balzac, a Shakespeare, or an Æschylus to make them manifest. Sometimes, however, they may be dimly perceived in the utterances of the victims, themselves barely conscious of the significance of the facts which they relate.
The Finance of Lord Treasurer Godolphin
Authors: Leadam I. S.
Published: March 2007

Godolphin had taken over the Treasury with an adverse balance, arising in the main out of the continental campaigns of William III., which the economies practised since the peace had, at the time of the King's death, failed to discharge. At the accession of the Queen, the funded debt stood at 10,000,000l. In addition to this, there were 2,338,628l. outstanding Exchequer Bills, borrowed at 7 and 8 per cent., and other arrears, amounting in all to about 12,750,000l. Taking the total revenue from taxation, direct and indirect, at 4,654,000l., which is the average of the last three years of William III., the outstanding indebtedness represented a capital sum approaching three times the annual taxation of the country. In 1697 a general mortgage was made of certain revenues and taxes amounting to nearly a million pounds a year, to be continued till 1706 as a fund for the discharge of about 5,100,000l. In the first session of the reign this mortgage was extended to 1710, to supply a deficiency of over 3¼ millions. Godolphin further allocated some additional taxes to constitute security for the floating Exchequer Bills (1 Anne, st. 1, c. 13).
The Sources for the History of Sir Robert Walpole's Financial Administration
Authors: Hall Hubert
Published: March 2007

The administration of Sir Robert Walpole has been treated from more than one point of view by the historical writers of a later age. The judgment passed by his contemporaries upon the statesman who was to themselves merely a protagonist of party warfare has long since been modified in several important particulars. But even after the lapse of more than two centuries since Walpole's birth, historians to whom history will always be ‘past politics’ are content to derive their estimates of his long administration from the blatant chronicles of the Whigs and Tories, or from perfunctory Blue-books, in preference to the original sources of information that are still available.
Irish Parliaments in the Reign of Edward II
Authors: Clarke M. V.
Published: March 2007

At the death of Edward I Ireland was, in theory, equipped with institutions on the English model. The various parts of the machinery of Irish government had been assembled and put together in the century following the Conquest. Imitation of English institutions was necessarily close, as the Anglo-Norman colonists were not content with anything less than their full share in the constitutional rights enjoyed by themselves or their kinsmen in England. From the first, the head of the English government in Ireland was the Justiciar; his duties were vice-regal and he obviously borrowed his title from the Anglo-Norman officer who acted as royal deputy in England. He was ex officio president of the King's Council in Ireland, a body which normally consisted of the chief officers of the Crown, but which was sometimes afforced by the attendance of the magnates and free tenants of the colony. The curia regis in Ireland was represented by the Court of the Justiciar; pleas which in England would have been called coram rege were heard by him and entered on the Justiciary Rolls. The oldest of the committees of the curia regis in Ireland was the Exchequer, which was probably constituted very soon after the Conquest. There was apparently one Itinerant Justice in the reign of John and with him two others were associated in 1221.
The Cattle Trade between Wales and England from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
Authors: Skeel Caroline
Published: March 2007

Early in the Civil War some North Welsh gentlemen addressed to the King a petition, the draft of which is preserved in the National Library at Aberystwyth:

“ To the King's most excellent ma'tie. The humble petition of yo'r Ma'ties Loyall subjects subscribed for and on the behalfe of themselues and the rest of the inhabitants of yo'r Ma'ties six counties of North Wales, Sheweth, That the sale of yo'r petitioners' cattle and Welch cottons being the principall and most considerable commodities of these countries, cottons usuallie vented in Shrewsbury and our cattle driven and sould in most parts of England, hath bin and is the onelie support of yo'r petitioners' being and livelihood, among whom there (be) many thousand families in the mountainous part of this countrey who sowing little or noe corne at all, trust merely to the sale of their cattle, wooll and Welch cottons for provision of bread.”
The Diplomatic Service Under William III
Authors: Lane M.
Published: March 2007

The Revolution of 1688 marks the beginning of an era of great importance in our foreign policy. This fact, together with the close personal supervision of foreign affairs by William III., makes the study of the diplomatic service in that reign peculiarly interesting. The following sketch does not pretend to be complete, but it is the fruit of much miscellaneous research.
The Duchy of Cornwall: Its History and Administration 1640 to 1660
Authors: Coate Mary
Published: March 2007

There can be few institutions which have so successfully eluded the serious historian as the Duchy of Cornwall, for only one aspect of its history and administration, that of its jurisdiction of the tin mines, has been adequately treated; its curious legal relation to the Crown, and to common law, its political importance in reference to Council and Parliament, and its economic significance as one of the largest landowners in England, all await detailed investigation. For such an enquiry there is abundant material available, both in the series of “Duchy of Cornwall Records” and “Miscellaneous Books” in the Augmentation Office of the Exchequer, at the Public Record Office, and in the fine collection of Ministers' Accounts, Assession Rolls, Court Rolls and other documents, preserved at the Duchy of Cornwall Office; a collection to which I am much indebted to Sir Walter Peacock, for giving me access and to Mr, Rollo Clowes, its custodian, for invaluable assistance in working at it.
Some Attempts at Imperial Co-Operation During the Reign of Queen Anne
Authors: Morgan W. T.
Published: March 2007

Recent historical investigations tend to push the fundamental causes of the American Revolution farther and farther back into the eighteenth century. It is, therefore, passing strange that the significance of the Canadian expeditions of the first decade of that century should have been neglected. These projects played an important rôle in bringing about a friendly co-operation between the continental colonies and the mother-country; they were no unimportant part of the military and naval phases of the war of the Spanish Succession; and they raised in a pointed way the whole question of sea power. In addition, the expeditions were used as pawns by the English in the diplomatic game, which eventually culminated in the treaty of Utrecht; they showed in a clear way the entire problem of imperial defence, as well as some of the tendencies in British and French imperialism in the early eighteenth century. Furthermore, such attempts at co-operation between colonists and mother-country revealed the superlative importance attached to colonial commerce by each of them, and helped create that most vexatious question of colonial paper money. Such a joint expedition against the French in North America was not only a contest between Whigs and Tories in England, but it finally became a struggle between the two great Tory rivals of the reign of Queen Anne.
The Order of the Holy Cross (Crutched Friars) In England
Authors: Beck Egerton
Published: March 2007

One of the religious communities dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII was described in its deed of surrender as ‘prior et conventus domus fratrum ordinis sanctae Crucis juxta Turrim Lond. vulgariter nuncupatae The Crossed Fryers’ —the house of the brethren of the Holy Cross, popularly called the ‘crossed friars’; a house whose memory is kept alive by the street near the Tower of London known as ‘Crutched Friars.’ The object of this paper is to give some account of the order to which it belonged, and to attempt to determine the number of its establishments in this country. It will be shown that its members were canons regular, and, assuming this for the moment, something must be said in regard to their designation as the crossed, crouched, or crutched friars.
The Relations of Great Britain with Guiana
Authors: Edmundson G. C.
Published: March 2007

Guiana, in the larger sense of the word, is that portion of the South American continent bounded on the north and north-east by the ocean; on the south, south-west and west by the river Amazon, its tributary the Rio Negro, the river Cassiquiare, which unites the river Negro to the river Orinoco, and by the river Orinoco itself. It is thus an island; as there is no break in the water-line that surrounds it. This larger Guiana is, however, divided into two distinct portions, separated from one another by a series of mountain ranges stretching from the Orinoco to the river Oyapok. That portion, which lies between these mountain ranges and the sea, differs entirely in character from the Guiana of the watersheds of the Amazon and Orinoco. It consists of a succession of tablelands, rising one above the other, and is watered by a large number of nearly parallel rivers, whose cataracts and frequent rapids render navigation into the interior, except by canoes, practically impossible. In this Guiana, the Guiana with which this paper deals, there have never been any Spanish or Portuguese settlements. At the end of the sixteenth century no attempt had been made by the Spaniards to cross the river Orinoco, or by the Portuguese, to reach the mouth of the river Amazon. Between these two rivers lay a terra incognita, of which nothing was known, until the publication of Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana in 1595.
The Birth of an American State: Georgia: An Effort of Philanthropy and Protestant Propaganda
Authors: Roberts R. A.
Published: March 2007

Students of the history of the communities now established in a great Republic and a great Dominion on the northern continent of America have this advantage: that they can begin at the beginning of things, at a definite point or from a line drawn, so to say, in the open plain in the light of the full day. There is for them no search for the head-springs of the river in almost impenetrable fastnesses, no dim twilight before the dawn, no doubtful region of myth or tradition or biassed chronicle. A plain tale of truth and fact is there for their perusal from the first. And I suppose in the case of no one of the States which has a beginning before the Declaration of Independence is this more conspicuous than in the case of the last of them formed from overseas, Georgia, the subject of the present essay. The authentic materials are ready to hand in the Public Record Office in abundance: in State papers, in entry books of letters, in books of appointments and grants to settlers, in journals of trustees, in minutes of the Common Council, in proceedings of the president and assistants for the town and county of Savannah from 1741 onwards, and in a mass of original correspondence, memorials and the like.
The Portraits of Historians in the National Portrait Gallery
Authors: Firth Charles Harding
Published: March 2007

The portraits in our national collection may be studied in many different ways. They may be treated as examples of Art, as illustrations of the life of some period of British history or as representations of some particular class of men. It seemed to me that a society composed of students of history might be specially interested in the portraits of historical writers. The men of a particular time have a certain resemblance to each other—there is a family likeness in the faces of the Tudor or the Stuart worthies. Soldiers and sailors, lawyers and divines, even when they belong to different periods, seem to possess some common characteristics in feature and expression which a psychologist could trace and define. But the historical writers seem to have no typical or distinctive traits. Nothing in their looks reveals common interests or common pursuits, except that some of them have a bookish air. No doubt the reason is that many of them were politicians or men of action, not merely writers by profession, and it is to our advantage that it was so.
The East Midlands and the Second Civil War, May to July, 1648
Authors: Hensman E. W.
Published: March 2007

It would be impossible, even if it were desirable, within the limits of this essay, to give a detailed account or even an adequate summary of the causes of the outbreak of the Second Civil War ; but I may be permitted to dwell briefly upon the military conditions under which the crisis was to be met.
The Mission of M. Thiers to the Neutral Powers in 1870
Authors: Rose J. Holland
Published: March 2007

In the usually unexciting annals of diplomacy there sometimes occur episodes which belong almost to the domain of chivalry; and such, surely, is that which forms the subject of this paper. It is hard to over-estimate the difficulties which confronted M. Thiers in the second week of September 1870, when he undertook to appeal to the chief neutral Powers of Europe on behalf of France. On September 2 she had suffered the staggering blow of Sedan. Two days later the Napoleonic Empire collapsed during vehement demonstrations in the streets of Paris, which had their counterpart in the chief provincial centres. The Republic was declared in several parts simultaneously; and the deputies for Paris, with one prominent exception, were acclaimed at the Hôtel de Ville as forming the Provisional Government of the French Republic. It is well known that, if that Government had not been speedily installed in office, a Red Republic would have been proclaimed, as was destined to happen in March 1871. The new Government, then, was a hasty makeshift. It had no mandate from the French nation. It promised, at first, to hold a General Election which should regularise the situation; but, as is now the case in Russia, the holding of a General Election during a furious war proved to be surrounded with very great difficulties, which could not be overcome until February 1871, after the armistice with Germany.
The Treason Legislation of Henry VIII (1531–1534): Alexander Prize Essay, 1916
Authors: Thornley I. D.
Published: March 2007

All legislation is to some extent the product of circumstance, and none more so than the numerous Acts which have from time to time augmented or reduced the law governing high treason. The basis of that law has been since 1352 the famous Act of 25 Edward III, stat. 5, c. 2, and this Act itself was moulded by the circumstances under which it was passed. Edward III was at the height of his power and popularity, so that in defining treason it was only necessary to include offences likely to be committed against a popular king reigning by an undisputed title. This accounts both for what the Act contains and what it omits, and is the reason for that sufficiency in quiet times which has preserved it for over five centuries. It accounts also for its inadequacy in crises and disturbances, and the need to supplement it under such kings as Richard II and Henry VIII. New treasons are thus emergency measures to enable the Government to cope with particular situations; when the troublous times are over, they and the offences with which they deal disappear naturally with the circumstances which provoked them, and the Act of 1352 once more reigns supreme. When considering the causes of its long life, it must be remembered that Treason Acts fall into two classes: those augmenting and those diminishing the scope of the offence. The Act of 1352 belongs to the latter class. It was passed to bridle the judges in the creation of constructive treasons—a process which had alarmed Parliament—and, unlike all other Acts of its class, it did not follow a revolution or period of crisis, as the Act of I Henry IV, c. 10, followed the reign of Richard II; 1 Edward VI, c. 12, that of Henry VIII; and 1 Mary, c. I, that of Edward VI.
Duelling and Militarism
Authors: Sieveking A. Forbes
Published: March 2007

It is not the object of this paper to suggest that there is any historical foundation for the association of a social or even a national practice of duelling with the more recent political manifestation, which is usually defined according to our individual political beliefs; far less is it my intention to express any opinion of my own on the advantages or evils of a resort to arms as a means of settling the differences that arise between individuals or nations.
The Historical Manuscripts at Lambeth
Authors: Jenkins Claude
Published: March 2007

When Peter the Great was wearied with London and Londoners, and even receiving visits of ‘the thin gentleman’ in ‘a modest looking coach’ to his lodgings in Norfolk Street, Strand, and returning them through the back door of Kensington House had ceased to amuse, he was induced to make an expedition from Deptford to Lambeth where, we are told, ‘nothing in England astonished him so much as the Archiepiscopal library … he declared that he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes in the world.’ One would like to know if they displayed to him among the MSS. that Elizabethan atlas (463) with its wonderful map of the New World and its mariner's compass in the wooden cover—an atlas made, as it shows, in days when Africa was better known than Scotland and Canada included what we now know as the United States; or Sir Henry Maynwaring's treatise on nautical terms (91, cf. 268), parent of many similar works. They form at any rate part of the original collection which the Archbishops hold in trust ‘to ye service of God and his Church, of the Kings and Commonwealth of this Realme, and particularly of the Archbishops of Canterbury,’ in the terms of Archbishop Abbott's will, ‘as they will answere unto me, and my predecessor [Richard Bancroft] in that fearefull day of God.’ Those treasures thus preserved have been added to, under sanctions less tremendous, not only by the munificence of Archbishops such as Sheldon and Tenison, Secker and Manners-Sutton, but also by the gifts of readers: or if Lambeth Library is the only one in London, public or private, of which it can be said that access has been given to students for over three hundred years, it may be allowed to the enthusiasm of one of the youngest as well as the latest of its Keepers to venture the opinion that it has gained thereby not less than it has given. It was a reader, John Selden, who saved it in the days of the Commonwealth: it was yet other readers, William Dugdale, and in the following century Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, who recovered for it valuable MSS. which, owing to the change of the times, could no longer be regained, as had been done in earlier days, by the weapons of the major excommunication and that godly discipline as to which some of my brother librarians probably agree with the Prayer Book that its restoration is much to be wished. And while there are many other readers down to the present time to whom the Library is indebted not only for books but even for MSS., there have been few I believe, who share with King James I the ignominy of having abused their privilege.
The Authenticity of the ‘Lords’ Journals' in the Sixteenth Century
Authors: Pollard A. F.
Published: March 2007

In a brilliant chapter in the ‘Cambridge Modern History’ the late Professor Maitland, dealing with the circumstances of the passage of Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity through the House of Lords, remarks: ‘Unfortunately, at an exciting moment there is a gap, perhaps a significant gap, in the official record, and we cease to know what lords were present in the House.’ This is a summary of a more detailed examination contributed by Maitland to the English Historical Review which reads as follows:—

‘It is well known that the Journal of the House of Lords becomes suddenly silent at the most exciting moment of this momentous session. It leaps from Saturday, April 22, to Monday, May 1; in other words, it leaps over the days on which the Supremacy Bill (No. 3) and the Uniformity Bill were receiving the assent of the House of Lords. Is this due to accident or is it due to fraud? The question springs to our lips, for we have every reason to believe that the journal ought to have recorded the fact that not one lord spiritual voted for these bills, and that every prelate who was present voted against them. This fact might indeed be notorious; but notoriety is not evidence, and in the then state of constitutional doctrine the Queen's ministers may have wished to deprive their adversaries of the means of “averring by matter of record” that the first estate of the realm was no party to the religious settlement. With some slight hope that the handwriting might be more eloquent than print, I obtained permission to see the original journal. It made no disclosure. In the first place, the work is so neat and regular that it looks, not like a journal kept day by day, but like a fair text made at the end of the session from notes that had been taken as the session proceeded. In the second place, the practice was to devote one page—or rather one side of a page—to every day, whether there was much or little to record. The session of Saturday, April 22, is described on the back of a page and ends with an adjournment to the next Tuesday; the session of Monday, May 1, is described on the front of the next page. Even if the book were unbound it would, I fear, reveal no more; for, as we apparently have to deal with a clean text made at the end of the session, any inference that we might be disposed to draw from the distribution of quires and sheets would be highly precarious, and “This may or may not have been an accident” would have to be our last word.’