A State Health Service is not as new an institution as is generally supposed. It existed in the ancient world in Greek lands, and, perhaps in imitation, in the Roman West. While, of course, it cannot be said that the National Health Service of twentieth-century Britain was inspired by the practice of antiquity (which, indeed, was probably unknown to those who created it), the modern scheme constitutes a return to a view of the State which obtained in ancient times. The beneficent activity of the Church and then of privately supported hospitals mitigated the results of the disappearance of the ancient Welfare State. The evidence, scanty as it is, for the Health Service among the Greeks throws light on their attitude towards the proper function of the State as well as on their great appreciation of the skill and activity of the medical profession.

In the course of a survey of manuscripts, undertaken for the forthcoming edition of Saint Bernard's works, the writer had the good fortune to find in Paris a series of unedited letters dealing with the problem of the disputed election of York. A rapid examination showed that whilst they threw no additional light on the main point at issue in this controversy, namely, on the truth of the accusations laid by his opponents against William of York, they certainly illuminated other aspects of the question, which hitherto had not been quite clear. They showed, for instance, the cause of the failure of the first legation to Rome in the early part of 1142, who were the main supporters at the Roman Curia of the opposing party, the dangers run by the Cistercians and Augustinians in presenting their case, and several other details of a like nature. Above all, the letters strongly confirmed all the conclusions reached by Professor Knowles in his article describing all the stages of this rather involved affair. Apart, therefore, from the inherent interest which a series of letters of this kind undoubtedly possesses, the decision to print them here seems, in view of the confirmation they provide, to need no further justification.

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.

It is unfortunate for our understanding of the history of the tenth century that, for several critical periods for which the historian would most appreciate a full and reliable account of events, contemporary sources of information fail him at vital points. Until quite recently it was difficult to feel certain about the date of King Edward the Elder's death and the circumstances in which Aethelstan ascended the throne of England. The years between the death of King Eadred in 955 and the succession of Edgar to the reunited kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex in 959 are still obscure. Of the character of the reign of Edward the Martyr, ‘Little can be gathered…beyond a vague impression of disorder, and the knowledge that a period was abruptly set to the endowment of monasteries which Edgar had encouraged’. For this reign the historian's complaint is less of the dearth of evidence than that it is nearly all of the same kind.

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.

It is generally recognized that Edward I deserves a high place in the history of medieval England, and it is plain why this should be so. Few medieval kings achieved such undisputed mastery of their dominions as he contrived to do. His statutes set a deep and lasting mark on English law, and he had much to do with the beginnings of Parliament. He conquered Wales, and, as his tomb proclaims, he was the hammer of the Scots. These things have led a great company of scholars, whose number includes men so differently placed in time and circumstance as Polydore Virgil and Sir Maurice Powicke, Fuller and Stubbs, Brady and Hallam, Hume and Tout, to see in Edward an historical figure of outstanding importance. On this, at any rate, they are all agreed. They are, however, far from unanimous in the reasons they find for their judgement, and in the significance they attach to the things he did.

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.

‘The Black in the West Indies will.… receive his Emancipation at the expense of his Brethren in Africa.’ So the Lieutenant-Governor of the Gambia had forecast before the 1833 Act, and he was right, although for the wrong reasons. Emancipation cramped the sugar production of the British Caribbean, but it did not affect the sweet tooth of the sugar consumer, and as West Indian output fell, sugar production in Cuba and (less noticeably) in Brazil rose sharply. Outproduced, undersold and overcultivated, the West Indian plantations began to lag as competitors, a result inevitable in the long run, but accelerated by the freeing of the slaves.

It is a remarkable fact that the only continuous series of records which has survived from the twelfth century, the Great Rolls of the Pipe, was not completely available in print with adequate indexes until the thirties of the twentieth century. The search for an explanation takes one back to the beginnings of English medieval scholarship in the early seventeenth century. The great antiquaries of that day had not conceived the idea of printing adequately indexed editions of the records they used, for the medieval past, when books were patiently transcribed by hand for circulation, was too near. When scholars met to discuss their work it was of making copies by hand and passing them from one to another that they talked. They were concerned that the notes sent to them should be on ‘paper of the same size for bignesse as the sender first did use’. To them in the seventeenth century, the past was a virgin field in which they had no forerunners; and they themselves aimed at writing history which should stand for ever.

Many of the most important political changes of the nineteenth century have been studied exclusively from the standpoint of London. Clear-sighted contemporaries have been long aware of the consequent misrepresentation. ‘Londoners are the lapidaries of the nation’, wrote Holyoake, ‘they polish the diamond found in the counties, and sometimes if no one challenges them, they take credit for the jewel.’ Only too often no one has challenged them. The result has been not so much a failure to render credit where credit is due as a failure to understand the mainsprings of national political action. It is only when the local element has obtruded unmistakably, as in the story of Chartism, that it has been examined with care. Where it has not obtruded, historians have often been more willing to accept things as they seemed from the standpoint of the capital rather than to investigate them as they arose.

On the morrow of the Congress of Paris, the coalition of Powers which had imposed its terms on a defeated Russia was weakened by serious dissensions. Throughout the negotiations leading to the conclusion of peace, France had shown herself sympathetic to the Russian point of view, and her attitude had produced great irritation in England. Soon a dispute arising from the execution of the treaty of peace was to create further misunderstanding between the two allied countries and to reveal openly to the world the extent of their disagreement. Allied discord, however, was Russia's opportunity, and Gorchakov before long was to make a determined attempt to separate France from England and thus destroy at a blow the coalition which had defeated Russia. In the face of Gorchakov's diplomatic offensive, Napoleon would now have to show how serious had been his ‘flirtation’ with Russia and how great was the value which he still attached to his alliance with England.

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.

The following letters from Frederick William Maitland to Reginald Lane Poole are supplied (with the addition of explanatory notes) by Mr Austin Lane Poole, President of St John's College, Oxford, from the original manuscripts which he has since presented to the Cambridge University Library. They are printed in full, together with such of the replies from Reginald Lane Poole as are preserved amongst the Maitland Manuscripts in the same Library.

In the year 1906, Abbot (later Cardinal) Gasquet published Lord Acton and his Circle, which contained 178 letters of Lord Acton, all of them except fifteen being addressed to Mr Richard Simpson. The bulk of the manuscripts passed into the archives of Downside Abbey, possibly in 1914, when Gasquet left England on becoming a Cardinal; though the fifteen letters addressed to Mr T. F. Wetherell are not there, and it has not been possible to discover whether the originals of these are still in existence. At the request of an American scholar the original holograph letters at Downside were recently re-examined for the first time, for the purpose of discovering whether any material concerning Lord Acton had been left unpublished. The inquiry revealed the fact that the volume was in many respects unsatisfactory as a work of scholarship.

In an article written some five years ago, it was remarked that in no field of medieval studies has recent progress been so notable as in the history of thought. The advance has continued, and already several pages then written have been put out of date by writings that have been subsequently published, or at least made available in England. A few further notes, therefore, to supplement and correct the earlier article, may not be out of place.