bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mounted Infantry in Mediæval Warfare
Authors: Morris J. E.
Published: March 2007

I have put together here a certain number of facts of some interest. A good deal of my material is already common property, and may be found in the volumes of the Records Commission or in Mr. Joseph Bain's ‘Calendar.’ Yet some is new, simply because the old manuscript catalogue of the Exchequer Accounts in the P.R.O. was not so good or systematic as the present printed catalogue, and therefore a gleaner in the field traversed by Mr. Bain may yet pick up much. I have already used or referred to some documents, partly in a paper read some years ago to the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society, partly in a work on Bannockburn which the Cambridge University Press has just published. I was ambitious to put before this Society some results of my researches, as this is the sixth centenary year of that battle, yet hesitated to offer a paper on the battle itself. But one cannot look at any of the facts without reference to that epoch-making event, and so I tried to find a thread upon which to string them. The most suitable title for my paper seemed to be ‘The Development of Mounted Infantry,’ because, although some of the documents illustrate the fortunes of an infantry which was very much not mounted, it was just the striving of the English leaders after Bannock-burn to find the most suitable type of soldier and the most suitable tactics, a striving necessitated by failure and the terrible experiences of the northern counties at the hands of the Scottish raiders, that at last produced the finest fighting man of the middle ages, viz. the horse-archer.
Secular Aid for Excommunication
Authors: Fowler R. C.
Published: March 2007

Excommunication is a power that probably every religious body has retained over its members. In the case of the Christian Church temporal punishment in addition to spiritual discipline appears to have been first introduced by the imperial edict De Summa Trinitate et Fide Catholica in 380; and it may have been about this time that the power of excommunication passed from the community to the bishop.
Year Books and Plea Rolls as Sources of Historical Information
Authors: Richardson H. G.
Published: March 2007

Eighteen years ago F. W. Maitland edited for the Selden Society the first volume of the Year Books of Edward II. In his introduction to that volume, moved by a pardonable enthusiasm, he wrote-perhaps not altogether advisedly— “It will some day seem a wonderful thing that men once thought that they could write the history of mediaeval England without using the Year Books.”. Since then that sentence has been frequently repeated, although it is to be feared that for the most part historians have turned a deaf ear to its warning: and lately Mr. W. C. Bolland, who has himself edited several volumes of Year Books for the same Society, has reiterated Maitland's plea and, going further, has drawn a damaging comparison between the Year Books and the Plea Rolls. The Year Books, we are told, “are the living body, acting and speaking and thinking and wrangling and changing its mind on the pressure of the moment”: while the Plea Rolls present “the skeleton, the dry bones of the bare facts.” It is true that Mr. Bolland is careful to explain that the Year Book and the Roll each contain matter which is absent from the other, and that for historical purposes neither is complete without the other: but there is no doubt that the general impression left by Mr. Bolland's lectures is that the Year Books are of high historical value, that they contain, in his own words, “innumerable matters of interest, legal, historical, constitutional and social, about which the record is entirely silent.”
The Influence of the Industrial Revolution (1760–1790) on the Demand for Parliamentary Reform
Authors: Whale Gwen.
Published: March 2007

The Whig interpretations of the English Constitution based on the doctrine of executive responsibility to Parliament, as established by the Revolution of 1688 and Locke's vindication of that event, were crystallised and defined by eighteenth-century political practice, eulogised and expounded by Montesquieu and Blackstone, and asserted and elaborated by Junius and Burke. But they were subjected to criticism at least two decades before the Revolution in France stimulated political speculation and inspired demands for reform. Long before the outburst of reforming enthusiasm expressed in the activities of the Revolution Society, the London Corresponding Society and the Society of Friends of the People, which was kindled by the opening episodes of the French Revolution, there was in England a well-established movement for parliamentary reform.
Practical Notes on Historical Research
Authors: Piggott Francis
Published: March 2007

Historical Research is very much in the air just now. Public opinion is at last awake to the fact, which is elementary to us, that only by knowledge of the way in which national problems have been solved in the past can the problems of the present and the future be successfully dealt with. Historical Research opens the gateways to the longforgotten centuries. In regard to the more modern times embraced by the last few centuries, its special object is to ascertain with precision the details of those problems, political and international, the reasons which led to their solution, satisfactory or otherwise. I propose to glance at this aspect of it only. When one realises what those national problems are, that they have varied little since we began to understand what the sea means to us, it stands to reason that research should be treated as a national business; but, after our traditional manner, the period about which we ought to know so much, but know so little, is left to the individual. And war impressions speedily fade: witness the interest which Parliament takes in this matter, and the knowledge it displays of the work involved, as shown by the opposition to the grant of a modest salary to the Historian attached for purposes of research to the Foreign Office. The general criticism was that no such officer was required, that everybody knew where the facts of any event in history were to be found, and that when wanted any Foreign Office clerk could be turned on to the job of finding them!
The Origin and Growth of the Office of Deputy-Lieutenant
Authors: Thomson Gladys Scott
Published: March 2007

An enquiry into the office of Deputy-Lieutenant, as created by the Tudors, might be said to belong, strictly speaking, to military history. But it belongs also to the history of local administration, for not only was the organisation of county levies an integral part of local government, but that type of military rule which prevailed under the Tudors touched the common life of the country at many points, and those matters with which the Lieutenant and his Deputies could be called upon to deal in the service of the Crown demanded at least as much administrative skill as aptitude in the military arts.
The Origin of Impeachment
Authors: Plucknett T. F. T.
Published: March 2007

Strangely enough, it is only during the last few years that constitutional historians have turned their attention to the origin of impeachment. Yet it was one of the most spectacular of parliamentary proceedings, often a decisive weapon in political warfare, and of such proved usefulness that it came to be regarded as an inherent function of any representative legislature, and as such it figures not only in the American constitutions but also in so recent a document as the Weimar constitution of 1919.
The Regimen Scaccarii in English Monasteries: The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Smith R. A. L.
Published: March 2007

The twelfth century was a period of rapid growth in English monastic administration. It saw the establishment of an obedientiary system and of a special organisation for exploiting the estates in all but the smallest of religious houses. At the same time, however, as the monasteries solved the main problems of household expenditure and estate management by entrusting administrative responsibility to the senior members of the chapter, they created a problem of equal magnitude: that of the common control of their revenues. How far, it may be asked, did the English monasteries succeed in meeting this difficulty and in combining the joint control and individual expenditure of their monetary income in one organic system? The present essay has been written as an attempt to supply an answer to this question.
The Study of African History
Authors: Blake J. W.
Published: March 2007

In speaking this afternoon on the study of African history, I am very conscious that the choice of subject is ambitious. Many aspects of African history are more and more attracting the close attention of scholars, and I wish to apply to the history of the African continent as a whole the experience gained by the study of some aspects of the history of one of the regions, the West Coast. For I have learned that there are dangers no less than securities in the pursuit in isolation of selected regional or topical studies. Authoritative regional histories—histories of the individual colonies of the European states in Africa—are badly needed. But it seems to me that such tasks of local specialized investigation should not be allowed, as they proceed, to throw out of focus the whole picture of African history. So I would respectfully suggest that a case exists for a broader and more integrated approach to the study of African history and for an interpretation of African events from the point of view not merely of the European but also of the Arab, the Indian, and above all the Bantu and the Negro. My appeal is for the study of African history mainly through African eyes and for its own sake.
The Byzantine Empire in the Eleventh Century: Some Different Interpretations
Authors: Hussey J. M.
Published: March 2007

I was originally provoked into a consideration of this particular problem by reading Ostrogorsky's Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates. A long-needed and courageous attempt to reconstruct the history of the empire and characterized by acute and penetrating analysis, this book is nevertheless marked by a certain unevenness of treatment. Side by side with brilliant sections on the achievements of the tenth century and the complications of the fourteenth (this latter perhaps the finest part of the book) must be set the brief and inadequate account of the years 1025–1081. Ostrogorsky is not alone. Misstatements and omissions continue, and often in unexpected places. Recent much used general histories, as for instance the third volume of the medieval section of the Glotz Histoire générale, still repeat the old emphasis on 1081 as the dividingline between a time of painful disaster and the new era of Comnenian glory.
Presidential Address: Machiavelli's Il Principe
Authors: Lodge Richard
Published: March 2007

Few names are so familiar as that of Machiavelli, who has given at least an adjective to every European language, and few books have been subjected to such intense scrutiny and such industrious commentary as his most impressive work, The Prince. It may well be thought that there is nothing more to be said about either the author or the book, and that an apology is needed for adding even an ephemeral address to the enormous mass of literature about Machiavelli. My apology or explanation is a simple one. The great majority of the critics and commentators deal with problems which are of great interest in themselves but do not concern my immediate object. One of these is the ethical question as to how far the supposed interest of the state—the raison d'état—justifies a departure from the ordinary accepted canons of morality or honesty. Another is the place of Machiavelli in the history of what is called Pohtical Science. And a third very fruitful topic is the influence of Machiavelli's teaching upon political action in successive generations after his death. I do not propose to deal with any of these matters, but to concentrate attention upon the narrower problem of the motive and purpose which induced Machiavelli to write one particular book, II Principe. This problem, in comparison with the others to which I have referred, has been largely neglected or obscured because most commentators have treated the book, in connection with the Discorsi, as a deliberate statement of Machiavelli's views as to the methods which should be adopted in founding, extending, and maintaining a principality.
School Life in Mediæval Finland–Mainly in the Town of Viborg, Illustrated by Royal Letters and Local Records
Authors: Smith Donald
Published: March 2007

Christianity approached the Scandinavian lands but tardily. By the time of Anskar's death in 865 there were churches at Birka in Sweden, at Hedeby in Schlesvig and at Ribe in south Jutland…. It was not until about 1150 that any effort was made to introduce Christianity to Finland.
The Proposed Anglo-Franco-American Treaty of 1852 to Guarantee Cuba to Spain
Authors: Ettinger A. A.
Published: March 2007

On August 24, 1851, Narciso Lopez, Venezuelan by birth, Colonel in the Spanish Army by merit, Governor of Madrid, Field-Marshal and Senator in the Spanish Cortes, by royal favour, and chief of the filibusters against Cuba by predilection, was captured by Spanish troops in his third attempt to destroy the sovereignty of Spain over that island. Although the President of the United States had solemnly proclaimed the illegality of such expeditions departing from Southern centres as New Orleans, the Government of the United States had taken no measures to prevent such departures and the abiding apathy of the American administration, together with the annexationist tendencies manifest throughout the preceding decade of American history, had rightly aroused Spanish suspicions concerning the true intent of the United States.
Presidential Address: The Mission of Henry Legge to Berlin, 1748
Authors: Lodge Richard
Published: March 2007

I have written a good deal about diplomacy during the War of the Austrian Succession, in defiance of Carlyle, who calls it “an unintelligible, huge, English-and-Foreign Delirium … a universal rookery of Diplomatists, whose loud cackle and cawing is now as if gone mad to us; their work wholly fallen putrescent and avoidable, dead to all creatures.” But I have never found occasion to say all that I wanted to say about a curious and little known episode that occurred just about the close of the war. Some interesting letters about Legge's mission to Berlin were printed in the first of Archdeacon Coxe's massive volumes on The Administration of Henry Pelham. But these letters serve to whet rather than to satisfy the enquirer's appetite, and there is a great deal more material in the Record Office and in the Newcastle Papers. Also it is possible in the present day to find in the sixth volume of Frederick's Politische Correspondenz ample accounts of the mission from the Prussian point of view. As I have had occasion to survey all this evidence, it occurred to me that I might fill an obvious gap in my studies of the diplomacy of the period by taking Legge's mission as the subject of my Presidential Address, and by endeavouring to bring out is connection with the general history of Europe and especially with the contemporary negotitations at Aix-la-chappelle.
Materials for the Reign of Alfonso X of Castile, 1252–84
Authors: Procter Evelyn S.
Published: March 2007

The historian Mariana, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, summed up the achievements of Alfonso X in the epigrammatic phrase Dumque cœlum considerat, observatque astra, terram amisit, and this conception of the king as a scholar incompetent to govern is, on the whole, still very generally accepted. More than a century later, the Marquis of Mondéjar, in his Memorias Históricas del Rey Don Alonso el Sabio, posthumously published in 1777, attempted a vindication of the king. His work is a narrative of the political history of the reign, based on the Crónica de Alfonso Décimo, a late and unreliable source, but the only narrative account of the reign that is of any length. Mondéjar was at pains to point out the contradictions and errors of the Crónica, and, wherever possible, to clear the king's reputation from its imputations. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century interest in Alfonso X has steadily increased. The publication of the text of his legal codes, and of collections of documents containing materials for this period, and the gathering together of records in the Archivo Histórico Nacional at Madrid have much facilitated the task of investigation. Some good work has recently been done on certain aspects of the subject. German and Spanish scholars have studied Alfonso's relations with Germany and Italy, arising out of his candidature for the Imperial crown; his relations with France have been elucidated, and much critical work has been carried out on his literary achievements. The publication of historical material, the specialized research of recent years, above all the advance in historical method and criticism, and the change in the fashion of historical writing which have taken place since Mondéjar's time have combined to make his work antiquated.
The Borough Business of a Suffolk Town (Orford), 1559–1660
Authors: Roberts Barrister R. A.
Published: March 2007

Orford is an East Anglian town or village, not widely known, and apt to be confounded in the post with famous Oxford unless one complies with official instructions and adds Woodbridge, Suffolk, to the address on the envelope. In this present century there are two opinions possible with regard to it according to one's temperament and circumstances: it may appear to be either a derelict town fallen on evil days, to be left at the first opportunity, or a delightfully quaint, old, picturesque village, remote from the multitude, abode of peace and quiet, peace and quiet now not even periodically broken, as once it was, by the shrill noises of weekly market and occasional fair. Its history, authenticated by monument in stone—in church, castle and house; and by muniment in parchment,—in charter, actbook and deed,—goes back beyond the ancient legal line “when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” Even before that, in the 12th century, it was an established port, with considerable trade, as proved by the amount of customs-duties collected. Historically, its first charter of liberties and privileges was granted by King Henry III, which was confirmed by succeeding kings from reign to reign.
English Architecture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Authors: Blomfield Reginald
Published: March 2007

ENGLISH architecture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the subject of my paper to-day, was essentially national and autochthonous in the sense that the characteristic qualities of the English people were written on its architecture as unmistakeably as those of the French, or Italians, or of any other people with a great historic past were written on theirs, and it is not possible to understand and appreciate the value of the art of any country, unless it is read by the light of the character of the people who produced it. This is peculiarly the case in countries with a long tradition of uninterrupted civilization, such as France and England, and in regard to our own country it is necessary to insist on this point, because there is always a tendency to regard our architecture as merely derivative. If it is Gothic, it is supposed to be an inferior reflection of French Gothic, and if it is neo-Classic, it is supposed to be the blundering effort of North Sea Islanders to reproduce the elegance of the Italian Renaissance. In fact, the art of this country, of which our continental neighbours are almost wholly ignorant, is supposed to be an insignificant affair, hardly worthy of serious study. The representation of English painting in the great continental galleries is absurdly inadequate. In Vienna there are some half a dozen bad examples; at Berlin a good Gainsborough and Raeburn; at Dresden a moderate Raeburn; at Munich, in the Prado, in the Ryks Museum, and at the Hague, there are no English pictures at all.
The Elibank Plot, 1752–3
Authors: Petrie Charles
Published: March 2007

Of all the myriad projects to restore the House of Stuart that known as the Elibank Plot is by no means the least interesting, and it is certainly the most obscure. So little, indeed, has it been regarded in the past that few historians have thought it worthy even of mention, though it does in fact throw considerable light, not only upon the political situation in Great Britain during the years that immediately followed Culloden, but also upon the intrigues of the leading Powers in the period preceding the Diplomatic Revolution. In view, therefore, of the obscurity in which this conspiracy has hitherto been shrouded, I must crave your permission to give some account of the authorities upon which my interpretation of it is based.
Economic Aspects of the Negotiations at Ryswick
Authors: Morgan W. T.
Published: March 2007

The treaty of Ryswick has been neglected by recent historians. No satisfactory account of it exists in English, for no one has touched it with serious intent since Lord Macaulay wrote his sketch during the last years of his life. Its economic and colonial aspects have been ignored by French and German historians. Yet this treaty plays a fundamental rôle in European diplomacy between the treaties of Nimeguen (1678) and Utrecht (1713). It is, in fact, a commentary upon the former and a prelude to the latter. The negotiations themselves are not without interest, as the procedure ranks among the most undiplomatic in modern history; for nothing (except the Emperor's interminable delays) passed off according to expectations.
Materials for the History of the Bentivoglio Signoria in Bologna
Authors: Ady Cecilia M.
Published: March 2007

In 1446 the dominant faction in Bologna, bereft of a head by the murder of Annibale Bentivoglio, invited Sante, an illegitimate scion of the house, to throw up his post in the Florentine wool-trade and assume the leadership of the city. For the next sixty years Sante and his successor Giovanni II exercised an ascendancy in Bologna which entitles them to a place among the more famous despots of the Italian Renaissance. The Bentivoglio Signoria is in essentials a typical outcome of the nation and age. Constitutionally, the position of its holders was even more ambiguous than that of the majority of their contemporaries. Like the Medici, they were in law, not despots but private citizens. The system by which their ascendancy was maintained mingled terrorism with beneficence. The coming of Sante followed upon a faction fight which brought death and exile upon the rival family of Canetoli, and in the course of years fresh rivals arose to suffer a like fate.
Sir John Fortescue and His Theory of Dominion
Authors: Chrimes S. B.
Published: March 2007

If an attempt were made to define the tendency of political thought in England during the fifteenth century, it would be destined to failure unless it gave expression to opposing views of the character of the time. Here, as elsewhere, the historian's most difficult task is to form not merely generalisations that will sum up part of the facts, but generalisations that will take account of all the facts, however irreconcilable they may seem. The task of establishing general statements about the fifteenth century is especially troublesome, for the character of no century in English history is more open to conflicting interpretation. The reason for this conflict is not the so-called transitional aspect of the period, for every century is transitional, and every historical generalisation must express a transition of some sort. The source of the conflict goes much deeper than that, and is to be found rather in the sheer contradictoriness of our evidence.
The Law Merchant in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Authors: Sutherland L. Stuart
Published: March 2007

The study of Law Merchant in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which I venture to read to the Society to-day arose out of some work upon the business of eighteenth-century merchants. I approach the complex problem of the Law Merchant therefore not from the point of view of the law courts but as the merchant himself approached it, by way of the problems of commercial intercourse.
From Witness of the Shire to Full Parliament
Authors: Cam H. M.
Published: March 2007

Twenty-eight years ago Professor Pollard, in a short note in the English Historical Review, gave a seemingly definitive explanation of the meaning of the phrase in pieno parlamento. His explanation has not, however, satisfied some later writers; there are still a number of different interpretations of the phrase current, and it seemed worth while to attempt a fuller statement. In seeking to establish a sound definition, however, a fresh problem was encountered, which remains unsolved after application to a wide circle of authorities, historical, legal and linguistic, and the following paper, which is in broad outline an elaboration of Professor Pollard's thesis, is therefore neither original nor complete.
The Merchant Adventurers of Bristol in the Fifteenth Century
Authors: Carus-Wilson E. M.
Published: March 2007

Ashrewd Italian visitor, writing of England more than four hundred years ago, remarked:—“There are scarcely any towns of importance in the kingdom excepting these two: Bristol, a seaport to the West, and Boraco, otherwise York, which is on the borders of Scotland; besides London to the South.” Now York was not a port, though it traded far afield through Hull; London was a port, but it was so much else that its story is confusingly complex; moreover it was not by the Thames but by the Severn that Englishmen first found a pathway to the New World at the end of the Middle Ages. Hence Bristol, then the second port in England, is of peculiar interest to the student of the still unwritten history of English commerce in the fifteenth century—a history unchronicled, but not unrecorded, and quite as significant as the wars abroad and the strifes at home which have too often earned for the century a character of futility.
The Will of Polydore Vergil
Authors: Whitney E. A. , Cram P. P.
Published: March 2007

Twenty-five years ago Cardinal Gasquet in a paper read before the Royal Historical Society pointed out the desirability of a new edition of Polydore Vergil's Historia Anglica based on an as yet unpublished manuscript in the Vatican Library. In this paper he referred to the important differences between the Vatican manuscript and the published versions of the Historia, and suggested certain significant possibilities in regard to some of the facts of Polydore Vergil's life. In the course of researches preliminary to the preparation of a critical edition of the Historia, the will of Polydore was discovered in the municipal archives of his birthplace, Urbino. The publication of this document provides a suitable opportunity for further comment upon the life and importance of “le premier historien humaniste en Angleterre.”
The Duchy of Lancaster Records
Authors: Somerville R.
Published: March 2007

Two hundred and fifty years ago a record-keeper sat amid the boxes, the cupboards and the shelves which housed his charges, compiling ‘an account of all or most of the records in the Duchy office and how to find them’. The result was invaluable for searchers in the Duchy of Lancaster records, but lacking order and arrangement, as its author was the first to admit, it is not a systematic description of these records and it says very little about their history. There is therefore some justification for attempting a comprehensive view of these records. The rich diversity of interest which the Duchy bears is fully reflected in the range of its records. It has indeed been said that ‘what the records of the United Kingdom are at large, these records of the Duchy are in miniature’. That is a bold assertion, difficult to sustain. For one thing, the Duchy never knew the complicated processes of the royal exchequer, and it must be obvious that the Duchy could not repeat in parvo the whole pattern of the nation's life. Yet the analogy gives a hint of the records' scope, and it becomes closer if we take the Duchy records to include those of the Palatinate of Lancaster. It is true that in the Public Record Office, which contains most of the records under discussion, the two series are treated separately, and the Guide, repeating a distinction drawn in 1868 in the Deputy Keeper's Report, says that the Duchy records ‘are entirely distinct from the records of the County palatine, which, although public, are purely local, whilst the Duchy Records, though private, concern the government and jurisdiction of the entire dominion of the Duchy and embrace the County Palatine as a subordinate regality’. This statement, which the grammarian finds imperfect as an example of the chiastic construction, is equally unsatisfactory to the archivist or historian if we understand it to refer to the palatinate, and not to the administration of the modern county council. We ought no more to segregate the palatinate simply because it was an organ of public administration than we should, say, a private hundred, and the description itself recognises the county palatine as a component part of the Duchy. How the judicial records of the court of Duchy chamber were any less public than those of the chancery court in Lancashire, is not explained. The distinction, in fine, is fallacious.
Prester John: A Fourteenth-Century Manuscript at Cambridge
Authors: Letts Malcolm
Published: March 2007

The text of the forged Letter of Prester John which began to circulate in Europe about the year 1165 was settled and printed by Professor Fr. Zarncke more than sixty years ago, and although later scholars have added their contributions to the subject and fresh manuscripts have come to light, students as a whole must still base their studies on Professor Zarncke's learned and painstaking work.
The Kiev State and Its Relations with Western Europe
Authors: Dvornik F.
Published: March 2007

The early history of Russia is still in many respects an unexplored field, and the place which the first Russian political organisation occupied in Europe from the tenth to the twelfth century is not yet appreciated as it deserves to be, even by Russian scholars themselves. The research carried out in this field in Russia at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century was cut short for almost three decades by political events. It is only recently that the history of Kievan Russia has aroused a keener interest among the historians of Soviet Russia, as witness the many studies published in Vestnik Drevnei Istorii and especially the work of B. D. Grekov.
Presidential Address: The Foundations of British Policy
Authors: Seton-Watson R. W.
Published: March 2007

I fear that my address to-day will inevitably disappoint expectations, for I have no state secrets to offer you, and in the time at my disposal I obviously cannot hope to cover so vast a field. A more modest, and therefore more correct, title would be ‘Some Aspects of Foreign Policy’, planned merely in outline, but capable of evoking and sustaining fuller discussion in parallel fields.
Henry VIII and Scotland
Authors: Mackie T. D.
Published: March 2007

Henry VIII was a great king, and great things were done in his day. The story of his reign has been told by more than one famous historian, and in that story Scotland, as a rule, plays only a small part. Generally she appears as the ally of France used to embarrass England from time to time, as a sort of Highland dirk threatening the back of stout King Hal as he faced south—a dirk little used in fact, and in use very ineffective; witness Flodden and Solway Moss! If we may judge by the standard histories, Scotland had little to do with the action and the movement of a stirring period.
Woodrow Wilson: An Interpretation
Authors: Perkins Dexter
Published: March 2007

A traveler to England in 1946 is speedily made aware of the immense admiration of the British people for the late president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is probable that no other American statesman has evoked quite so warm a regard in the British Isles. Roosevelt early understood the issues of the war which Britain was forced to take up in 1939, and quickly responded when the collapse of France put that country in imminent peril. His intimacy with that great Englishman, Winston Churchill, dramatized the close association of the two English-speaking countries in the struggle that came to a close only a year ago. It would have been strange if he had not been appreciated by the British people. There was, however, another great American president who led his country into war, and stood by the side of Britain in critical days. His name was Woodrow Wilson, and he seems in general to have won far less affection and regard in Britain. Yet he, too, was a great man. It is the object of this paper to make him, as the author hopes, a little better understood, and to demonstrate why he deserves a place amongst the most eminent of the presidents of the United States.
The Corporation of Bedford, 1647–1664
Authors: Parsloe C. G.
Published: March 2007

The limiting dates of this paper are those of the first surviving minute book of the Corporation. Though Bedford is a borough by prescription and its earliest charter, granted by Henry II, confirms the privileges enjoyed under Henry I, there is evidence in the muniments of the Corporation generally, as well as in the character of the first minute book itself, that its beginning marked a significant stage in the evolution of the governing body. It certainly marked also the opening of a period of constitution-making which may fairly be described as eventful, even in comparison with other English boroughs of the seventeenth century, for between 1649 and 1660 the rules for the election of the Common Council were comprehensively revised four times. Antagonisms which belong to national politics are clearly involved in these short-lived reforms, but there are also others, local in origin, which cannot well be understood without some knowledge of the relations between the governing body and the freemen in the reigns of the first two Stuarts.
Some Spanish Reactions to Elizabethan Colonial Enterprises
Authors: Quinn D. B.
Published: March 2007

Spain's concern with the eastern shores of North America during the earlier part of the sixteenth century had been a peripheral one. Exploration under official and private auspices, both along the coasts and into the interior, had yielded a rich harvest of information, but, down to 1561, projected and attempted settlements and missionary enterprises alike had failed to lead to the establishment of any permanent foothold in Florida or on the coast further north. Spain was nevertheless determined, then and later, to deny the North American lands to any foreign power. But if the preservation of her monopoly rights underlay Spain's resistance to foreign intervention, her occupation of Florida from 1565 onwards and her continued concern to eliminate attempted foreign settlements there and further north in the later sixteenth century was governed by more specific and practical considerations.
English Regular Canons and the Continent in the Twelfth Century
Authors: Dickinson J. C.
Published: March 2007

The ideal of the regular canons originated in the fumbling, sporadic response of public opinion in the Western Church to that programme of a complete common life for clerical communities to which the Lateran Councils of 1059 and 1063 had given oecumenical recognition. It had at that time taken root only in central Italy and the extreme south of France. Thereafter it spread rapidly in most of southern and north-eastern France, though in Normandy there was no house of regular canons until c. 1119 and none in Brittany till 1130. The order flourished in the Rheims area from an early date, and it is here, in the seventies of the eleventh century, that we find the first traces of the Rule of St. Augustine being adopted by regular canons. Yet it was long before regular canons uniformly served this Rule, and in the second and third decades of the following century writers as far apart as Liége and Ravenna would speak of it very cavalierly.
Pope Alexander III and the Canonization of Saints: The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Kemp E. W.
Published: March 2007

Although the cult of the saints was so prominent an element in medieval religion, decrees controlling it occupy a comparatively small place in the medieval canon law. In the Decretum of Gratian, composed about nineteen years before Alexander III became pope, there are only two decrees of importance which seem to concern the canonization of saints. They come from the two chief periods of legislation on this subject, the fifth and the ninth centuries. The first of them is a canon of the so-called fifth Council of Carthage (401 A.D.) which was perpetuated in the West in the Dionysian and Hispana collections, and was among the canons chosen from the Dionysiana by Charles the Great as specially relevant to his time. The second was passed in 813 by the Council of Mainz and under the influence of the same emperor. Together they appear in the collections of Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres and then in the Decretum of Gratian where they remained in effect the only written legislation on the subject until the time of the fourth Lateran Council.
The Growth of a Borough Constitution: Newark-On-Trent, 1549–1688
Authors: Parsloe C. G.
Published: March 2007

It is expected of orators in Newark-on-Trent that they should refer to the town as “the loyal and ancient borough”. Historians may accept the description as accurate, for when Domesday Book was compiled there were burgesses in Newark, and its loyalty to the crown is a part of the story of its municipal development in the vigorous phase which opened in 1549 with the grant of a royal charter of incorporation. This paper is concerned with that phase, but since the mayor and aldermen were later declared the inheritors of privileges enjoyed before the town's incorporation, it may be helpful first to outline briefly its earlier organisation.
Roman Catholic Relief and the Leicester Election of 1826
Authors: Greaves R. W.
Published: March 2007

“The election cry”, wrote the first Lord Colchester to his friend Lord Amherst, after the general election of 1826, “has been upon the Corn Laws, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Roman Catholic claims.” Not dissimilarly, the Annual Register reported that the subjects most canvassed in the election were the corn laws and Roman catholic emancipation. Croker found attention concentrated on what he called “the three C's”, corn, currency and catholics. On the other hand, Peel, observing more precisely, not merely recognised the widespread interest in the catholic question, but also was equally impressed by the importance in the various contests of personal and local rivalries. For parliamentary elections when contested were still, as in the eighteenth century, determined very largely by local loyalties, although national issues begin to play a larger part.
The Duke of Mar in Exile, 1716—32
Authors: Bruce Maurice
Published: March 2007

The reputation of John Erskine, nth Earl—and in the Jacobite Peerage 1st Duke—of Mar, has never stood very high. The incompetence that he showed as leader of the rising of 1715 left him but a scanty title to fame, and his conduct during the sixteen years which he spent in exile was so bitterly criticised by his enemies within the Jacobite party that he is generally remembered only for the ineptitude he displayed as a military commander and political conspirator. Even when anything is known of his subsequent career, it is usually something to his discredit, and the old stories are still in circulation: indeed, the latest biographers of The Old Chevalier go so far as to describe Mar as a “rat,” and call him the “evil genius” of his master. A study of some of the sources for Jacobite History after the '15, and particularly of the Stuart MSS. at Windsor Castle, seems to suggest, however, that Mar has been somewhat maligned and misunderstood in the past. The Stuart Papers, now in part printed by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, certainly throw fresh light on many aspects of Jacobite politics, and in this age of “Historical Revisions” it is but just that Mar should receive his due measure of attention.
The Chronology Of Labour Services
Authors: Postan M.
Published: March 2007

The chronology of labour services in the Middle Ages has been agitating agrarian historians for nearly a hundred years. In view of this it is surprising to find how many of the dates are still a matter of assumption. On the whole, economic historians know much more about the final demise of labour dues than about their previous history. They may disagree as to the exact dates of the fourteenth-century commutation, or as to the extent to which England had been manorialised and was therefore likely to be affected by the dissolution of the manor.
Faversham and the Cinque Ports
Authors: Murray K. M. E.
Published: March 2007

The Cinque Port tradition which inspires the civic pride of the Portsmen of this day has been built upon their former naval importance. We are accustomed to think of this group of towns, Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich, ringing the south-eastern coast of England, as sentinels of the channel, “the Gates,” as they liked to describe themselves, “that open and shutt to the perill or safety of this Kingdome.”
Pierre D'Ailly and the Council of Constance: A Study in “Ockhamite” Theory and Practice
Authors: Roberts Agnes E.
Published: March 2007

The opening of the Council of Constance in November 1414 was an occasion full of promise and possibilities. The promise was more than dimmed, perhaps, by the attitude of John XXIII, who had taken three years to come to the point of summoning the council to which he had stood pledged at his election, but still it was an event at which all Christendom rejoiced.
Manuscripts and the War
Authors: Flower C. T.
Published: March 2007

This afternoon you will be listening, not to conjectures or explanations with reference to events which took place in the remote past, but to a report of proceedings of the last two or three years.
The Significance of the Baronial Reform Movement, 1258–1267
Authors: Treharne R. F.
Published: March 2007

The most significant feature of the baronial movement of 1258 is that it was the first deliberate and conscious political revolution in English history. The Angevin system of government, essentially a centralised despotism grafted on to the stock of a primitive national monarchy and growing within the framework of a feudal society, was transformed, at the Parliament of Oxford, into a limited monarchy based on written constitution. The entire power and authority of the crown, in every sphere of government, was put into commission and vested in a privy council of fifteen magnates, selected, not by the king, but by a sub-committee appointed by a committee of the great council; and for nearly two years England was successfully governed and reformed by this nominated privy council, which acted throughout in virtue of the mandate expressed in the Provisions of Oxford, regarding itself as representative of and responsible to the great council. In the king's own words, the Council of Fifteen treated him as a minor under their wardship, settling affairs of state without his presence, and without having asked him to attend, issuing orders without awaiting his authorisation, ignoring his views, and merely replying ‘Nous volons qe issy soit’, without any further explanation, when he remonstrated; they passed over his nominees for offices high and low, appointing others against his will; they used his great seal without consulting him, and denied him all use of it; in fact, they so far diminished his royal power and dignity that little or nothing was done at his command, and his orders were neglected as though it were the council that reigned.
The Transition to Christianity in the South Pacific
Authors: Morrell W. P.
Published: March 2007

Though the operations of the Christian missionary societies in the nineteenth century are in a general way well known, very rarely do we find a satisfying account of the transition among the native peoples of the mission fields from their old magico-religious beliefs to Christianity. The histories of the missionary societies are full and well documented, but they take too much for granted. The anthropologists give us ideas for which we must be grateful, but we cannot expect them to do the historian's work for him. And surely this subject is of general historical interest.
Manorial Organization in the Low Countries in the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Centuries
Authors: Ganshof F. L.
Published: March 2007

The type of economic organization known as the manor existed in the north of Gaul, including the regions which were later to be known as the Low Countries,1 in the Merovingian period and even in Roman times, but it is not till the eighth century that evidence regarding it becomes relatively abundant. The little that can be said of its structure and diffusion before the Carolingian period can only be of an introductory character. We have no evidence as to the relative proportions of large, middle-sized, and small estates, but there can be no doubt from texts of the seventh and early eighth centuries that large, indeed very large, estates existed at this period.
Free Trade in Land: An Aspect of the Irish Question
Authors: Burn W. L.
Published: March 2007

In 1811 the Solicitor-General of Ireland was prosecuting at Clonmel some members of two agrarian societies of the Ribbon type, the Caravats and the Shanavests.

What (he asked) is the first object of these savage associations, to enforce the commands of which you are nightly plundered of your arms? It is the regulation of landed property and its produce, it is the vain and idle attempt to fix a maximum for rent and to prescribe the price of labour, it is the frantic project to prevent the transfer of property and to frustrate the exertions of industry. The nature of things, still more than the operation of positive law, has decreed that property should find its own level; and it is the first principle of a commercial country, and the first consequence of national prosperity, that property should be in a state of perpetual transfer and circulation.
Anglo-Saxon Poetry and the Historian
Authors: Whitelock D.
Published: March 2007

Vernacular poetry of the Anglo-Saxon period survives in considerable bulk—nearly thirty thousand lines. It is certainly a mere fraction of what once existed. What chance has preserved is not always just what one would have chosen, and its historical value is by no means proportional to its extent. It has not been neglected as a source for Anglo-Saxon history, and I do not claim that this paper is about to add to our knowledge of the period. Nevertheless, it may be of some interest to historians to consider both the value and the limitations of Old English verse literature as historical material. I am not concerned to-day with its literary merit, and I propose to narrow my subject by confining myself to English history. The importance of Beowulf and Widsith for the student of Scandinavian history is quite another story.
The Transference of Lands in England, 1640–1660
Authors: Chesney H. Egerton
Published: March 2007

The primary object of this paper is to indicate the extent of the transference of lands in England between 1640 and 1660. A considerable part of the paper will be devoted to a provisional classification of the various purchasers of lands in order to make clear the reasons why so many men are buying, and why royalists and others are selling. An attempt, however, will also be made to account for the various rates of sale established by the several acts and ordinances of sale. And, finally, it will be indicated that there is evidence to support a belief that the events of the Commonwealth period had much more than a temporary effect upon the distribution of land in England.