The literary tradition about the makers of early written codes in Greece presents so many contradictions and inconsistencies that it is natural to take refuge in complete scepticism. But if the tradition is analysed, it appears that there are two strata, the first reasonably consistent, matter-of-fact and credible, the second progressively vitiated by influences which can be isolated and explained. The division between the two strata lies about the year 300 B.C. and the primary tradition is not necessarily less credible because of the existence of the secondary tradition, which proves not that the primary tradition was false, but that truth itself could not prevail against the pseudo-history which set in after Aristotle. The primary tradition about the personalities of the early makers of codes cannot be lightly rejected; the content of their codes, as far as it is given in the primary tradition, is not inconsistent with the general character of early Greek lawgiving as it can be reconstructed from other evidence.

The story of John de Warenne's rusty sword and the blustering speech with which he proffered it before the justices in eyre in the quo waranto proceedings in 1279 long held it s place both in serious and popular accounts of Edward I's reign. It put, indeed, in dramatic, perhaps even in theatrical, form the essence of the struggle between the king's theory of sovereignty which was sound law and the barons' claims to hold their franchises by prescription which in a good many cases was sound history as indeed the king was at length constrained to admit in the statutes of 1290. Maitland apparently did not question the tale, and the extract from the chronicle in which it occurs held its place in eight successive editions of Stubbs' Charters. But the most eminent of our living historical critics entertained doubts, and when in 1910 Dr Round published his work on Peerage and Pedigree, which was relished by the general public almost as much as it was valued by the learned world, it was found that the rusty sword, with many other tales of the Conquest, was dismissed from the canon of history. When, three years later, Professor Davis produced a ninth edition of Stubbs' Charters—a work no less valued by the world of scholarship than Dr Round's, though it may be doubted whether it was much read for entertainment in other quarters—the well-known extract had silently disappeared.

Of the many sixteenth-century conferences which sought to bridge the gulf between Catholicism and those who had broken away from the Church, the Colloquy of Poissy was perhaps the most spectacularly staged. It was, however, remarkable more as a spectacle than as a serious theological discussion, and its true importance lies rather in the movement which brought it into being, and the particular aspirations, both political and religious, which were bound up in it, than in the actual tenor of the debates. Its real significance lay in this, that it represented a local attempt made by those Catholics who were opposed to the continuation of the suspended Council of Trent, to deal on their own initiative with the religious situation and to put into action their own eirenic ideas of church reform. They counselled concessions in ceremonial and discipline and the largest possible doctrinal lenience, in the hope, if not actually of effecting reunion with the Protestants, at least of removing some of the most powerful incentives to schism. The realization that the Council of Trent, if resumed, would neither favour this policy nor commend itself to Protestant support impelled them to resist the papal wishes and to call for a new council of Catholics and Protestants at which reunion should be the principal objective. These views spread wherever the growth of large bodies of heretics, organized and defying persecution, had caused serious embarrassment to the state by weakening the country's unity, imperilling the general administration, and presenting altogether a political problem that demanded urgent solution. But although to a large extent inspired by the exigencies of government the programme of the moderates was not based entirely on considerations of political expediency. The party did not lack theologians: Zasius, Gienger, Staphylus, in the Emperor's entourage, and liberal Catholics like George Cassander, were all men on whom some shreds of the mantle of Contarini and his followers may not unjustly be said to have fallen.

The subject of treaties of guarantee has been discussed with great ability and exceptional knowledge by Sir Ernest Satow in a recent number of the Cambridge Historical Journal. It is, however, one of such historical interest and also of such immediate practical importance, that it may perhaps be permissible to offer some additional observations upon it, and I hope that the value of what I have to say will not be diminished by the fact that I shall be chiefly occupied with what may at first appear to be largely a question of language. After all, treaties are the legal instruments by which the relations between states are defined, and we know how much difficulty may arise, even in private affairs, from the incorrect wording of legal documents and from carelessness in the use of technical expressions.