Page 224, Offler, H. S. for Reichsgat read Reichsgut

The degree to which England had already adopted or grown into feudalism by the generation before the Norman Conquest is one of the oldest of historical controversies, and one in which the opposing views, having reached something like a stalemate, seem now disposed to concede a measure of recognition to each other's premisses. Recent treatments of the tenth and eleventh centuries are cautious and compromising. They are apt to speak of “nascent feudalism”, or of the Normans’ mission to develop and give precision to a Saxon feudalism which is never clearly delineated, but which is assumed to be far advanced. I would suggest on the contrary that, given the known components of early English law and the admitted difficulty of bringing this hypothetical Saxon feudalism to definition, the proper approach to the subject should be one not of compromise but of scepticism, and that, as no major passage of Saxon politics can be made to bear that surface appearance of baronial motive and interest which the play of Norman feudalism everywhere presents, any phrase or text of Saxon law which can be made to carry a feudal implication should be tested rigorously to see if it is susceptible of no other interpretation before a strictly feudal meaning is imposed upon it. I must confess that no single term or maxim of the English codes or charters having any claim to genuineness has ever seemed to me to bear a feudal connotation.

The action of the Roman government in 201 B.C. has probably attracted the notice of every student of ancient history. Within a few months of the treaty of peace with Carthage, the Senate decided that a new war was necessary, a war overseas in the East against an enemy who was not dangerous to Rome at that moment, and who, as is clear to us now, could hardly have become dangerous in the future. Such is the bare statement of the event; and if we knew everything that happened both at Rome and in the East in this critical year the event, no doubt, would no longer be surprising. But, as it is, our knowledge is defective, and perhaps fatally so. One knows that at Rome the charges of the new war made it impossible for the Treasury to pay the interest on the public debt, and that the Roman people was anxious for peace and voted against the first proposal for a war with Macedonia, facts which are in no way surprising when they are regarded as natural consequences of the long war against Carthage; but when they are considered in relation to the new war against Macedonia, they increase our bewilderment rather than diminish it. And the difficulty that is felt by modern historians is not one of modern creation.

The following notes were put together in response to a suggestion that workers in other fields might be interested to hear something of our problems and the solutions we are finding for them. I have addressed myself to such readers and have tried to avoid both the minute and the technical. I have confined myself to four topics largely from considerations of space. An article that covered the whole ground could have been little more than a select bibliography, and what I thought was wanted in this case was an indication of what the books contained. The selected topics have been chosen partly with reference to the amount and importance of the work that has recently been devoted to them, and partly because of their special relevance to the subject in hand. Thus much could have been said of the very interesting development of views as to origins and the pre-conquest period in general or of the important advances that have been made in the understanding of revenue, taxation and finance, but it will probably be agreed that these had to make way for such subjects as constitutional theory and parliament. Reasons for certain other obvious omissions will be given later.

The election to the Convention Parliament of 1689 was one of the most important ever held, but singularly little attention has been paid to it. A detailed examination has revealed a number of factors which cast fresh light on the state of the country during the Interregnum and on the composition of the Convention Parliament. In this article I intend to restrict my attention to three aspects of the election: firstly, the effect of James II's preparations upon the composition of the House of Commons; secondly, the effect of the preparations of William III and his supporters; thirdly, the manner in which this election was fought in the various constituencies.

At an International Historical Congress of some years ago, one speaker explained that, so long as Europe had possessed one Church and one learned language (the Latin), nationalism was suppressed. This dictum received both contradiction and support; but the occasion was unsuited for any but the most superficial discussion. Ever since, however, I have noted passages which seemed to bear upon this important question; and I print them here, with the minimum of comment, by way of assistance to other students who may find time and inclination to pursue the matter further. Professor Marcel Handelsman of Warsaw has surveyed the subject, in brief, with a refinement of philosophical analysis to which I make no pretence. I try to use the term nationalism consistently within my own rough limits, but without attempt at scientific definition. My main object is to present evidence for the reader's judgment, without disguising the direction in which I lean myself: evidence varying a good deal in cogency from case to case, but with variations which any careful reader can estimate. Only thus can one start any really fruitful discussion. The multiplicity of indications collected in this comparatively short time convinces me that these are no more than the merest fraction of that which might be revealed by a concentrated search; but even this fraction may be enough to give a general idea of the whole.

The letters of Lord North have made us familiar with the portrait and the general posture of a Minister who was in the habit of behaving like a prisoner seeking release—a man “tied to the stake”as he once said—a Minister who repeatedly urged that his continuance in office would bring certain disaster upon the nation; who cursed the futility of what he privately called that damned American war; who complained of illness, depression of mind, loss of memory and general unfitness for his post.

Philip Nye was one of the most important of the early Independents. His youthful allegiance to the cause, and his exile from 1633 to 1640 in Holland, gave him a breadth of outlook and an experience of congregational churches which effected a greater balance of his natural abilities. He has been coupled with John Goodwin as one of the most original minds among later Puritans. Returning from Holland, he soon had occasion to display his talents. As a representative to the Westminster Assembly he became one of the group of dissenting ministers which challenged the validity of the Presbyterian system of church government. The five “Holland Ministers” resisted the alien centralising policy of the Scottish Presbyterians. During the Protectorate, Nye became more prominent in ecclesiastical politics, but the Restoration forced him into the background. He died in 1672, serving an Independent church in London as its “doctor”.

The complicated series of disputes which followed the York election of 1140–1 is familiar in broad outline to all students of the period. From a small beginning the strife came to involve almost every person of importance in England, and many on the Continent, and lasted, in its ramifications, for some twenty years. Yet the history of this controversy, though it could not fail to receive some notice in any detailed account of the times, has not hitherto been set out in full with complete accuracy. This failure has been due in part to the nature of the records, which are scattered among English chronicles, papal documents and Cistercian sources, and can only be fully used by one who has them all before his eyes simultaneously; many of those who have treated the episode obiter have failed thus to assemble them with completeness. In part also it has been due to gaps in the evidence at more than one crucial point, which have thrown all historians back upon conjecture. These gaps, in part, still exist, but it so happens that within the last few years a number of independent studies have reconstructed much of the narrative that was hitherto dark, and some important documents have come to light; it is therefore possible to arrive at something approaching to a clear view of the whole business.

The seventh chapter of Mr Kingsley Martin's admirable work, The Triumph of Lard Palmerston, is headed: “The completion of the picture (October 1853-January 1854).” But the picture is not complete. Palmerston's culminating triumph was when Sebastopol fell in September 1855: for he was then established as the unquestioned leader of the motley throng of Whigs, Peelites, and Radicals, which was about to become the Liberal party. The rise of his star naturally produced the setting of Lord John Russell's. In the 'forties, Lord John was Prime Minister and Palmerston Foreign Secretary; in the 'sixties, the positions were reversed, and Lord John was not Prime Minister again until Palmerston's death. The story of the rise of Palmerston and the decline of Lord John is long and complicated: for the statesmen were seldom rivals, and the problem cannot be solved by biographical study. The events of one short period—the first six months of 1855—none the less stand out as decisive in their careers.

General Diebitsch's victory at Kulevcha on 11 June precipitated a series of events which brought the Russian army to the gates of Constantinople and Turkey to the verge of dissolution early in September. The maintenance or the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in Europe suddenly became the issue in St Petersburg. Was the maintenance of that empire more advantageous to Russia than its dissolution?

Among the actors on the political stage of post-Bismarckian Germany Kiderlen-Wächter occupies a place apart. His robust and rather gross personality stands out from the surrounding throng of shadowy figures, beloved by few, disliked by many, ignored by none. To this day the question is asked what he would have done had he been at the helm in 1914, and whether perchance he might have averted the rush of the avalanche. The Swabian Bismarck, as Naumann called him, impressed his contemporaries as the ablest German diplomatist of his generation with the possible exception of Marschall von Bieberstein. His admiring biographer and friend Dr Jaeckh declares that he came too late and went too soon.

In April 1884 Prince Bismarck, chancellor of Germany, suddenly broke away from his long maintained anti-colonial policy, and inaugurated the German colonial empire by placing Angra Pequena under German protection. Angra Pequena was a small harbour in the middle of the unoccupied territory that later became the first German colony, South-West Africa, a long coastal stretch which England did not particularly desire and had several times refused to annex. It had only one really good harbour, Walfisch Bay, which England already possessed. Furthermore, the senior members of the second Gladstone ministry, which was in power in 1884, were generally opposed to new colonial adventures. In such circumstances, it was to be expected that Bismarck's new departure would meet with little or no opposition from the British Government, and that the formation of the comparatively modest German colonial empire would not cause a ripple in the cordial diplomatic relations existing between the two countries at that time.

No aspect of fifteenth-century Florence can be completely without interest, although a bare minimum may seem to attach to a study of the Jews during this period and of their connexion with the city finances on the one hand and the establishment of a Mons Pietatis on the other. Yet the economic foundation on which the magnificent artistic and literary superstructure rested is clearly important, and that not only for the fortunes of the Medici and other ruling, or rival, families, Strozzi, Pazzi, Tornabuoni and the like, but also where it affects the daily lives of the popolo minuto, tailors, potters and fishermen, or those craftsmen who by their labours built the church of San Spirito and the Ospedale degli Innocenti. Nor can we disregard a chapter of history which closes with some of the most direct and the most practically effective of the sermons of Savonarola.

“Ce clergyman laïque, obstiné et maladroit”, so Bismarck spoke of Salisbury to the French Ambassador in 1879, contrasting him with Beaconsfield, whom he thought a man of broader outlook; and we have Salisbury's testimony to Bismarck's “extraordinary penetration”. Yet, among the many difficulties that hamper an attempt to analyse the policy of Salisbury, perhaps the greatest is that there are few subjects on which he was consistent. He made almost a principle of inconsistency. “This country”, he said, “which is popularly governed, and cannot therefore be counted on to act on any uniform or consistent system of policy….” This was in April 1878 at the beginning of his first term at the Foreign Office. As so often happens circumstances strengthened his belief. His early tenures of the Foreign Secretaryship were short, and divided by a Liberal administration whose actions materially affected British policy. The whole period was crowded by movements abroad and at home which compelled adjustments of ideas. Twice, at any rate, he had not a free hand, in 1878–80 and again in 1886, for in the first case he had to reckon with Disraeli and in the other with a divided Cabinet.