No secular institution of the English Church has left behind richer materials for the study of its history in the twelfth century than the cathedral chapter of St Paul's. There is a fine series of original charters, and two important cartularies; fragments of a twelfth-century survey, and a complete survey of the early thirteenth century from which a long stretch of agrarian history can be reconstructed. The letter collections of Gilbert Foliot, bishop from 1163 to 1187, Master David of London and Peter of Blois, and the splendid thirteenth-century inventories give an insight into the activities, characters and tastes of many of the canons. The chronicle and ordinances of Master Ralph de Diceto, the most distinguished of its deans; a sprinkling of hagiographical and theological writings; calendars and obit rolls; and a catalogue of the holders of the thirty prebends, purporting to start in the days of Bishop Maurice (1086–1107)—these and numerous other more incidental sources of information go to make up the tale of the evidence.

Although the castle is regarded as a distinguishing feature of feudal society in medieval Europe, its functions in that society have been less adequately studied than its architecture. The variety and importance of those functions arose principally from the role of the castle in government. Any ruler needs organized force at his disposal as a final sanction for his authority. It is required both against the external enemy and to preserve internal order; it has both a military and a police function.

Even in the uncertain and tempestuous times of Henry VIII, Cromwell's fall from power was unusually sudden and precipitate. On 18 April 1540 he was created earl of Essex and great chamberlain of England, thus confounding his enemies and those onlookers who had seen him tottering for some time; for the next two months he appeared to be enjoying his master's confidence as much as ever; but on 10 June he was suddenly arrested at the council table, hustled to the Tower, condemned without a hearing, and kept alive until a belated execution on. 28 July only because Henry still wanted his testimony against Anne of Cleves. It is alleged that he foresaw his fall some two years earlier, and indeed it is probable that he was always aware of the dangerous insecurity of a position which so entirely depended on the royal favour; nevertheless, when the knife actually fell it seems to have taken him by surprise. How and why it all happened are questions that have often been considered, but may never find a completely satisfactory answer because the principal actors in the drama did not commit themselves on paper. Burnet pointed out long ago that Henry's dissatisfaction with Anne of Cleves cannot have been the sole or even the chief reason, because Cromwell obtained his last and greatest honours after that storm broke; he saw the decisive factors in the accusations of heresy which were brought against Cromwell.

In the first great age of English scholarship, to write history was to write polemics. England was a legal, not a geographical expression; to write her history was to interpret her law, or the relation of that law to the Crown, and so to take sides in the battle of parties. The law was timeless; its principles were the same in all ages; the past was a storehouse, not of mere examples, but of authoritative precedents. A statute whose making was ‘beyond memory’ was of greater authority than one whose beginnings were known. What the constitution was it had always been and to define its past was to define its true nature in the present. No scholar wrote more openly to support a cause than Dr Robert Brady, who was Master of Caius College from 1660 to 1700 and defended the Stuart monarchy with his learning in the last ten years of its existence; but the paradox of his career is that no man did more to bring to an end the climate of thought in which his work had been born. An interpreter of history in an age remembered rather for great textual scholars, he was a principal agent in bringing English historical method out of its medieval and into its modern period. For the student of English historiography in its peculiar and intimate connexions with legal and political thought he is, therefore, a notable figure.

The part played by Queen Victoria in the conduct of foreign affairs during the early phases of Bismarck's unification of Germany, and more particularly during the crisis of 1866, has been but incompletely revealed in her published correspondence.1 The editors of the Queen's letters, obliged to make a careful selection from abundant manuscript material, could not, from the nature of their task, give a comprehensive account of the Queen's influence on the conduct of diplomatic affairs. Nor has any subsequent historian examined in detail the Queen's tenacious struggle for the success of her German policy. Hardie's study, the only one which covers the subject, is based, on the diplomatic side, exclusively on the Queen's published letters.