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.

In the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, Vol. I., pp. 28, etc., I commented upon a thirteenth-century Survey of the Manor of Martham, Norfolk, which seemed to carry back the conditions then existing (both as regards the tenants and the agriculture) to a very much earlier period. The use of the old English word “eriung” (ploughing), to describe a full villein land, implied its continuous use from Angle times all through the Danish occupation. The universal intermixture of lands held by the two classes of villeins and sokemen (by which terms alone the tenants were called), together with the obvious inter-relation of their families, pointed to a common origin and a generally accepted equality of status which was apparently still existent in the thirteenth century. In view of the fact that the manorial conditions of compulsory service had been introduced by the Bishop in 1101 for his newly-founded monastery at Norwich, it was felt not unreasonable to date back to that period the conditions disclosed in the Survey. This would bring us to within a few years of Domesday Book, where the lands are described as almost exclusively held by freemen.

On October 26 Professor Dr. Joseph Redlich, on behalf of the University of Vienna, delivered an address to the Fellows of the Royal Historical Society on the present state of the Family-, Court-, and State-Archives (Haus-, Hof-, und Staats-archiv) at Vienna. Professor Redlich gave a short history of these famous Archives, with a general survey of the astounding wealth of historical documents and State Papers which they contain. He explained the great dangers with which the dismemberment of the old Empire of the Habsburg Dynasty and the formation of several new sovereign states out of the ancient Austrian territories threatened the very existence of these early sources of historical study. He was happy to be able to report that most of these dangers had been averted—at least for the time being—by mutual agreement of the representatives of several Governments concerned. The unanimously accepted thesis that in execution of the respective clauses of the Peace Treaty, the so-called principle of “provenience” should be rigorously observed, gives a guarantee that the Viennese Central Archives of the Dynasty, the State and the Empire will on the whole remain in their present state.

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 title of this Paper, which was suggested to the present writer many months ago, was framed in rather vague terms in order to afford him an opportunity of selecting a particular topic at his leisure. It would be no easy matter to deal with the whole subject,—to catch in a single lecture the spirit of mediæval London, or to speak adequately of a mass of Records, which even for this restricted period, are very numerous. Happily, as regards the latter, something has already been done. Some sixty years ago Mr. H. T. Riley contributed to the Rolls series four volumes containing the essential matters in the Liber Custumarum and Liber Albus, two custumals of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which are a treasury of information for the student; a life's work, directed by fine scholarship, is represented in Dr. R. R. Sharpe's Calendars of Wills in the Court of Husting, his Calendars of Coroner's Rolls and Mayor's Correspondence, and the nine volumes of Letter Books abstracted by him; and other portions of the City's Records have been freely quoted in standard works on social, political and economic history. In view, therefore, of the abundance of evidence available for those well qualified to interpret it, I trust you will allow me to take a narrower and more modest subject, yet within the wide boundaries of the title given.

When I had the honour of being invited to read a paper before this Society on the above-mentioned records, I hesitated to accept, but the consideration that for the last 60 or 70 years these records have been practically inaccessible to students prevailed. Only quite recently, however, following upon a request made to the President of the Probate and Divorce Division to allow a particular series amongst them to be consulted, this position has been somewhat modified. Some of the cases quoted in this paper may in consequence be already familiar to my audience. The recent publication of Miss Eleanor Trotter's Seventeenth Century Life in a Country Parish, taken, it is true, chiefly from the records of the Quarter Sessions which dealt with certain cases instituted in the first instance in an Ecclesiastical Court, has given us a picture of social parish life more vivid and illuminating than any I can hope to conjure up as the result of these researches. The records I propose to treat of in this paper have their counterpart in almost all of the Episcopal and Archidiaconal Courts in England. The form of procedure in all is practically identical, but the historical interest of the records preserved in Somerset House is, I venture to think, somewhat greater. Under Section 89 of the Court of Probate Act of 1857, the Judge of the Probate Court had power to requisition from Ecclesiastical custody any books wholly or mainly of a testamentary nature, and under Section 66 of the Divorce Court Act 1857, the Secretary of State had power to requisition all matrimonial records.

The first difficulty which confronts the student of the English forest is to be found in the ambiguity of the terms which are used to describe it. In its proper sense the word “forest” denotes either the whole area in which the king's game is protected by a special law, or a separate administrative district within it. But there are other and looser uses to which the term is put in the records. In the first place, it is frequently applied to mere woods in a forest area. Thus the wood of Islip, near Oxford, known by the distinctive name of “Cauda Aliz” or “La Quealiz,” appears at one time as a part of the forest of Brill, at another as a separate forest coupled with it. Brill, in its turn, was merely a part of the forest of Bernwood, which was itself a member of the “Forest between the bridges of Oxford and Stamford”.

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.