Last May, I had the honour of reading a paper before the Society on the subject of the development of the study of seventeenth-century history hi the past: to-day, I wish to say something about the development of the study in the future. I am not going to prophesy: not even to try my skill in what politicians term ‘intelligent anticipation of the future.’ My aim is a much humbler one: I mean to make a brief survey of the field of seventeenth-century history, and point out some of the things which in my opinion need doing, in order to complete our knowledge of the subject.

In a brilliant chapter in the ‘Cambridge Modern History’ the late Professor Maitland, dealing with the circumstances of the passage of Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity through the House of Lords, remarks: ‘Unfortunately, at an exciting moment there is a gap, perhaps a significant gap, in the official record, and we cease to know what lords were present in the House.’ This is a summary of a more detailed examination contributed by Maitland to the English Historical Review which reads as follows:—

‘It is well known that the Journal of the House of Lords becomes suddenly silent at the most exciting moment of this momentous session. It leaps from Saturday, April 22, to Monday, May 1; in other words, it leaps over the days on which the Supremacy Bill (No. 3) and the Uniformity Bill were receiving the assent of the House of Lords. Is this due to accident or is it due to fraud? The question springs to our lips, for we have every reason to believe that the journal ought to have recorded the fact that not one lord spiritual voted for these bills, and that every prelate who was present voted against them. This fact might indeed be notorious; but notoriety is not evidence, and in the then state of constitutional doctrine the Queen's ministers may have wished to deprive their adversaries of the means of “averring by matter of record” that the first estate of the realm was no party to the religious settlement. With some slight hope that the handwriting might be more eloquent than print, I obtained permission to see the original journal. It made no disclosure. In the first place, the work is so neat and regular that it looks, not like a journal kept day by day, but like a fair text made at the end of the session from notes that had been taken as the session proceeded. In the second place, the practice was to devote one page—or rather one side of a page—to every day, whether there was much or little to record. The session of Saturday, April 22, is described on the back of a page and ends with an adjournment to the next Tuesday; the session of Monday, May 1, is described on the front of the next page. Even if the book were unbound it would, I fear, reveal no more; for, as we apparently have to deal with a clean text made at the end of the session, any inference that we might be disposed to draw from the distribution of quires and sheets would be highly precarious, and “This may or may not have been an accident” would have to be our last word.’

The title of the paper as it appears in the sessional programme, ‘Concerning Historical Bibliography,’ is somewhat vague. What I have to say this afternoon chiefly concerns the forthcoming ‘Bibliography of Modern British History,’ which owes its inception to Fellows of the Royal Historical Society. It is not necessary for me to describe the extensive literature published in various countries and at various times on the subject of Historical Bibliography, as retrospects have been the theme of several papers read by me to the.Library Association, some as far back as 1885, when I first submitted to that body ‘Proposals for a Bibliography of National History,’ since approved, amplified, and improved by Mr. Frederic Harrison and by Dr. G. W. Prothero in addresses before this Society.

In this paper I propose to deal with two questions: (1) the history of the contest between the regulars and seculars for the possession of Canterbury Hall, Oxford, and (2) the identity of the secular Warden. It is better, it is certainly quite easy, for purposes of treatment, to keep these two questions distinct; it is better also to take them in the order just given.

I have put together here a certain number of facts of some interest. A good deal of my material is already common property, and may be found in the volumes of the Records Commission or in Mr. Joseph Bain's ‘Calendar.’ Yet some is new, simply because the old manuscript catalogue of the Exchequer Accounts in the P.R.O. was not so good or systematic as the present printed catalogue, and therefore a gleaner in the field traversed by Mr. Bain may yet pick up much. I have already used or referred to some documents, partly in a paper read some years ago to the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society, partly in a work on Bannockburn which the Cambridge University Press has just published. I was ambitious to put before this Society some results of my researches, as this is the sixth centenary year of that battle, yet hesitated to offer a paper on the battle itself. But one cannot look at any of the facts without reference to that epoch-making event, and so I tried to find a thread upon which to string them. The most suitable title for my paper seemed to be ‘The Development of Mounted Infantry,’ because, although some of the documents illustrate the fortunes of an infantry which was very much not mounted, it was just the striving of the English leaders after Bannock-burn to find the most suitable type of soldier and the most suitable tactics, a striving necessitated by failure and the terrible experiences of the northern counties at the hands of the Scottish raiders, that at last produced the finest fighting man of the middle ages, viz. the horse-archer.

The late Dr. James Gairdner read a paper before the Royal Historical Society on November 15, 1906, upon a sixteenth-century drawing in the Cotton collection which depicts the burning of the town of Brighthelmstone in the reign of King Henry VIII. It will be remembered that Dr. Gairdner came to the conclusions that the accepted accounts were not reliable; that the raid depicted really took place in the spring of 1514 and not in the summer of 1545; and that the French did not burn the town on the latter occasion.

Excommunication is a power that probably every religious body has retained over its members. In the case of the Christian Church temporal punishment in addition to spiritual discipline appears to have been first introduced by the imperial edict De Summa Trinitate et Fide Catholica in 380; and it may have been about this time that the power of excommunication passed from the community to the bishop.

Though the materials for the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth are very completely known, occasional sidelights may be thrown on this period from minor sources which have hitherto escaped notice. At Oxford, for example, there is a large number of manuscripts which have been little used. It is the object of this paper to give some indication as to their nature and relative importance. An exhaustive account is here impossible. As a rule the manuscripts described are inedited, but references to exceptions are given in the footnotes. At the outset, it must be confessed that the new information disclosed is neither large nor of great intrinsic value, yet nothing which will add to the primary sources of a period is unworthy of notice.