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History and Historical Criticism: Recent Work of Richardson and Sayles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Robert Livingston Schuyler
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Extract

The collaboration of Richardson and Sayles in the investigation of early English parliamentary history has long been justly celebrated. A full generation has passed since the publication of the first of those studies of theirs which have done so much to widen and deepen knowledge about medieval parliaments and have made their names, usually coupled, household words with students of medieval English constitutional history. The authors were influenced, no doubt, by some earlier historians, and the statement that they built on foundations laid by Maitland and McIlwain is not incorrect. In the volume, however, which is here under special consideration, The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta, they do not undertake, qua historians as distinguished from historical critics, to come this side of the reign of King John, when parliaments had not as yet assumed their later form and functions.

I

Why, it seems not inappropriate to ask, was this latest joint product of their historical activities written; to what class or classes of readers was it particularly addressed? It was evidently not designed as a manual of the type that students of English constitutional history have long been familiar with; for one thing, its chronological scope is limited to about two centuries, from c. 1000 to 1215; and much of the book would be unintelligible to beginning students of the subject. An apologia, which serves as a Preface, and a preliminary chapter suggest answers to the questions that have just been asked.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , May 1964 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1964

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References

1. A statement made by Geoffrey Templeman, e.g., in a well-informed article on “The History of Parliament to 1400 in the Light of Modern Research,” University of Birmingham Historical Journal, I (1948), 202–31Google Scholar.

2. Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963)Google Scholar.

3. Tanner, J. R., “The Teaching of Constitutional History” in Archbold, William A. J. (ed.), The Teaching of History (Cambridge, 1901), pp. 51–68Google Scholar.

4. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, pp. 12 and 13Google Scholar.

5. Ibid., pp. 22-23.

6. Ibid., p. 21.

7. Ibid., p. 172.

8. Ibid., p. 6.

9. Hollister, C. Warren, “The Norman Conquest and the Genesis of English Feudalism,” A.H.R., LXVI (1961), 643Google Scholar.

10. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, pp. 26–28Google Scholar.

11. Ibid., p. 29.

12. Ibid., p. 92.

13. Ibid., p. 123.

14. Seeley, J. R., The Expansion of England (Boston, 1909), p. 163Google Scholar.

15. Cohen, Morris R., Reason and Nature (New York, 1931), pp. 68–69Google Scholar.

16. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 120Google Scholar.

17. Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1943), p. 677Google Scholar.

18. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 42Google Scholar.

19. Ibid., p. 48.

20. Ibid., p. 48.

21. Ibid., p. 49.

22. Ibid., p. 55.

23. Ibid., p. 48.

24. The article is cited in note 9, above. The book is entitled Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions on the Eve of the Norman Conquest (New York, 1962)Google Scholar.

25. Stubbs, William, Constitutional History of England, (6th ed.; Oxford, 1897), I, 273nGoogle Scholar.

26. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 30Google Scholar.

27. Ibid., p. 30.

28. Ibid., p. 62.

29. Ibid., p. 62.

30. Ibid., p. 62. In a lecture published twenty years ago Galbraith, V. H. emphasized Wendover's, unreliability. Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris (Glasgow, 1944)Google Scholar.

31. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, pp. 62ff.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., p. 66.

33. Ibid., p. 65.

34. Ibid., p. 136.

35. For the discussion in ibid. of matters relating to coronations, see pp. 136ff.

36. Ibid., p. 140.

37. Ibid., p. 140.

38. 1 Mary, Statute 3, c. 1.

39. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 139Google Scholar.

40. Ibid., p. v.

41. Ibid., p. 156.

42. Ibid., pp. 157-60.

43. Ibid., p. 198.

44. Adams, G. B., Constitutional History of England, ed. Schuyler, R. L. (rev. ed.; New York, 1934), p. 121Google Scholar.

45. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 241Google Scholar.

46. Quoted in ibid., p. 321.

47. Galbraith, , Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris, pp. 17ff.Google Scholar

48. Painter, Sidney, The Reign of King John, (Baltimore, 1949), p. 347Google Scholar.

49. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 363Google Scholar.

50. Ibid., pp. 365-66.

51. Ibid., p. 367.

52. Ibid., pp. 368-69.

53. Ibid., pp. 267-68, 294.

54. Ibid., p. 240.

55. Schuyler, R. L. (ed.), Frederic William Maitland, Historian: Selections from his Writings, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960), p. 28Google Scholar.

56. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 263Google Scholar.