In the old days when the Germanic Diet still sat at Frankfort, a statesman, who then represented the power which was destined to sweep into nothingness that famous institution, told me that he always had a Tacitus by his bedside. ‘Then,’ I replied, ‘you hardly agree with your distinguished countryman who called Tacitus a disappointed courtier.’ ‘If,’ he rejoined, ‘there were many courtiers like Tacitus, I should take care to frequent courts.’

The historical importance of Henry I.'s charter of liberties has been fully recognised by the leading writers of our time. Shortly quoted and confirmed by Stephen and Henry II. in their charters of liberties, it was called Magna Carta in the beginning of the thirteenth century, if not earlier; its influence on the constitutional struggle under King John has been often pointed out from the St. Albans chroniclers. Messrs. Round and Hall but lately showed its remarkable use in a French document of the same age. No apology, therefore, is needed, if herewith a first attempt is ventured to ascertain its authentic words from 28 texts. It has to be reconstructed, as none of the more than thirty originals once existing is preserved to us. Many former editors have, indeed, picked up in their notes one or other of the numberless variations between the manuscripts, but they have not tried to distinguish scribes' errors, intentional alterations, forging tendencies, and the differences resulting from the fact that several exemplars of equal authenticity went out from Westminster on or shortly after that fifth of August 1100, when Henry was crowned.

The absence of authentic materials will probably make it for ever impossible to recover with any degree of accuracy or fulness the history of the Mendicant Orders in England. Save for a few stray extracts embedded in other documents, all the Acts of the provincial chapters of all the four Orders in England are lost, and have been lost for centuries. It is in those Acts that one would have hoped to find the outlines of the educational organisation of the friars. In the absence of this source of information one has to rely on a few chronicles, a few letters, the general Constitutions of the Orders, the Acts of the General Chapters, the registers of the general masters, and the Acts of the provincial chapters of other provinces. But even here the Quellen are very incomplete: many have been lost; many exist only in manuscript or in very rare editions; while the manuscripts are generally difficult of access to an English student. In the present paper I have been compelled, owing to the want of materials, to omit all mention of Carmelites and Austin Friars, and to confine myself to Dominicans and Franciscans.

Nothing is so attractive to the historical student as a mystery to be unravelled upon which ingenuity and research can be exercised; and hardly any unsolved historical riddle has excited more speculation and interest than has the extra-ordinary, and apparently inexplicable, treatment extended by Philip II. to his former prime favourite and trusted minister, Antonio Perez.

The first of modern colonial empires, the dominion of the Portuguese on the coasts and seas of Africa and India is in one sense more interesting than any of its successors. For it is, of course, essentially and peculiarly connected with the beginnings of that expansion of Europe and Christendom which, above all else, marks off the modern from the mediæval world. In other words, the growth of Portugal through discovery into a position of commercial and naval leadership is of general value to the whole of the Western world, in a way that is not shared by the similar and later growth of Spain, Holland, France or England. The development of these states belongs mainly to their own history. Immensely as they influenced one another, they none of them, to the same extent as Portugal, opened the way by which alone Europe could expand at all. None of them can rival her in the credit of breaking down the middle wall of superstitious terror which parted the unknown worlds along and beyond the ocean from the Christendom of Dante and Chaucer. None of them, in the same special originative way, can claim the glory that Camoens claims for his nation, the glory of

Opening up those wastes of tide,

No generation openèd before.

I do not propose to lay before you to-night any new theory of the constitutional position of the earldoms under Edward I. My purpose is political rather than constitutional, and, where it is not political, biographical and topographical. I wish to attempt the task of describing simply and clearly what were the number and nature of the earldoms under Edward I., with what great houses they were connected, in what districts their strength mostly lay, what manner of men the earls themselves were, and in what relations they stood to the king. I fear that I have no novelty to bring forward. The details that I shall use will come nearly all from very obvious sources, such as the printed Calendars of Post Mortem Inquests, Dugdale's ‘Baronage,’ the Lords' ‘Reports on the dignity of a Peer,’ and the ordinary chronicles and printed records of the time. Many of my facts I came across in a task that has occupied me a good deal lately, and which I have found to be by no means an easy one. I have been trying to construct a territorial map of England under Edward I., with the special view of finding out in what districts lay the power of the chief baronial houses. My excuse for laying my facts before you is that, however trite and dull they may seem, they are not always known by those who might be expected to know them. When lecturers and text-book writers—to say nothing of more serious authors—are still sometimes content to repeat the grossest inaccuracies as to the power and position of the greater nobles—when the standard historical atlas makes the ‘Grafschaft Oxford’ the ‘Gebiet der Vere,’ and the ‘Grafschaft Westmoreland’ the ‘Gebiet der Nevill,’ the elementary truths that I wish to drive home cannot be said to have obtained very general acceptance.

There has been revived in various ways, within the last few years, an old subject of controversy, namely, the execution of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, in cold blood, on the surrender of Colchester to Fairfax in 1648. Mr. Firth's discovery of the Clarke papers, his valuable lives of the two knights in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’, Mr. Gardiner's judicial summary of the case, and—magnis cotnponere parva—the erection of a memorial on the scene of the execution by a local enthusiast, have all contributed to remind us of a dispute which has led, at the hands of partisans, to heated and angry recrimination.

The political development that our part of the world has undergone in later times, and the result of which is the modern European political system, is characterised principally by two circumstances. On the one hand, the nations feel themselves more and more real unities; they do not suffer themselves to be divided, or sold, or exchanged, as easily as before. The idea of nationality has forced its way strongly, and has demanded recognition with great persistency. This demand of the different nations for national independence, more clearly understood and more and more consciously realised in the process of time, need not, however, bring with it an isolation of the peoples from each other. For just as little as the individual without danger to the development of his life can shut himself out from communication with others, so such a thing is as little possible for nations. Besides the tendency now alluded to, and quite as strong, there is another whose aim is to join the nations with each other, and which makes itself felt in livelier intercommunication and a more intimate culture-connection between the peoples. No really important event in the life of one nation can come to pass without having a certain influence on that of the others. ‘There is,’ says Ranke, ‘no country's history in which universal history does not play a great part.’ This is of course especially applicable to the great events which have made historical eras.

This return is plainly a mere fragment. The page on the Lansdowne MS. is without a heading and is bound up between the Isle of Wight and part of Staffordshire. Some of the small inclosures recorded would be with a view to future building, and altogether these entries, which seem principally to refer to the east side of London, are of little value as enabling us to estimate the magnitude of the agricultural revolution. As towns increase in size, fresh areas of land are naturally taken for accommodation land by butchers & c. Such areas would be returned as conversions to pasture. The following extract is interesting in this connexion.