The 1559 Book of Common Prayer printed by Richard Grafton has been dismissed by bibliographers, who have suggested that Grafton printed it as ‘agent for Jugge and Cawood’ (the Queen’s Printers) and ‘improperly put his name in the imprint’. Relying on evidence from a 1559 Grafton prayer book in the collection of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which contains the signatures of members of Elizabeth i’s Privy Council that can be dated prior to the opening of Elizabeth’s Reformation Parliament, this article argues not only that Grafton’s Book of Common Prayer was legitimate (indeed ‘authorised’), but also that it may have been printed in a limited edition, perhaps to be circulated in association with the Bill for Uniformity.

This bibliography is part of the preparation of an edition of Eriugena's Periphyseon (De diuisione naturae) for the series, Scriptores latini Hiberniae, published by the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. It supplements the shorter one contained in J. F. Kenney's Sources for the Early History of Ireland, i: Ecclesiastical (New York 1929), and, except in the lists of MSS., does not repeat what is contained there. The letter K against a MS. indicates that it is mentioned by Kenney. Dom Maïeul Cappuyns's study, published in 1933, would have afforded a broader and sounder foundation to build upon, but its bibliographical material, though ample, is not systematically arranged. Kenney supplies the form, Cappuyns the greater part of the matter, the rest of which derives from researches carried out since he wrote.

The peculiar difficulty of contemporary or near contemporary history is less the privacy of archives than the excess. This is the more true concerning an age like that of Hitler, where the accidents of war, and the seizure of documents, followed by a consuming public interest, especially in Germany, have led some governments to open their archives before they would otherwise have considered it wise. The great collection of State (and other) papers in the Bundesarchiv at Coblenz already affords material for many enquirers for many years. The material for the Church struggle as it lies in archives was surveyed by John Conway, with a delightful description of the extraordinary confusion, and movement of papers hither-and-thither, caused by war and its aftermath. For obvious reasons the West managed to collect the most important papers. But no one should overlook the circumstances that documents and archives lie still inaccessible, or largely inaccessible, in the East. This is not peculiar to the documents of the age of Hitler, for students of the nineteenth century cannot yet gain access to the substantial Russian collections, even when these students hold chairs in the German Democratic Republic or in Poland and even when they work upon some ‘harmless’ and remote theme. The Polish archives are more available but are only beginning to be sorted and published. The Russian academy has much to do before it can make its resources more widely available.

Tudor governments were characterised by their concern that Tudor power and policies should be advertised in pomp and pageantry and in the printed and spoken word. A great deal of work has been done by modern historians on this subject. One of the most exhaustively researched aspects of Elizabeth's reign has been the pomp and pageantry surrounding the queen herself; the products of the Elizabethan printing presses and pulpits have also been dealt with, although not as systematically. There has been little attempt to follow up Conyers Read's introductory article on William Cecil as one of the government members responsible for propaganda. The present study proposes to consider from this perspective the career ofan eminent Elizabethan ecclesiastic and statesman, Elizabeth's first archbishop of Canterbury.

Simon Sudbury is one of the more obscure archbishops of Canterbury.He should be better known, if only because he was archbishop during a particularly confused but important period of English history—the period of Edward III's dotage and Richard II's minority. Anything which casts a little light upon the politics and personalities of that period should be welcome to historians.

Manuscript Douce 103 in the Bodleian Library is one. of three manuscripts compiled in the late fifteenth century by a priest of Hereford diocese, the others being MSS Douce 60 and Douce 108. The manuscripts contain elementary grammatical texts such as an English version of Donatus's Ars minor, with rearrangements and expositions of hymns, psalms, canticles and sequences (often using material peculiar to the Hereford Use in this country, and showing a particular interest in St Anne and the Virgin), and copies of John Mirk's Festial and Instructions for Parish Priests. A note in the hand of this compiler on fo. 228v of MS 60 may give some clue as to his identity;

Between the accession of queen Victoria and her death sixty-three years later the Wesleyan Methodist Church increased its membership from 292,000 to 454,000 persons. Recently, however, Dr. Currie has put this seemingly impressive growth in better perspective by indicating that in no censal decade after 1841 did the Connexion keep pace with the increase of population. In this paper that increase will be examined under two categories. First, those sudden spurts of growth which the Church then and later, related to that intensification of devotional practice and religious fervour which it called ‘revivals’; secondly, the regular work and growth of the Church in the years when there were no remarkable increases of members. The third and concluding section will consider the interplay of these factors and the character of Wesleyanism at the end of the century.

Under the leadership of James the Lord's brother the Christian Church at Jerusalem was probably the most influential of all existing Christian communities. It could boast a system of internal organisation under authoritative resident leaders; it was an important missionary centre, despatching apostles and recalling them, or sending advisors to them when they were in difficulties. Neither the prestige nor the destiny of the Jerusalem Church were the immediate concern of the author of the Acts of the Apostles, and it is Hegesippus who keeps us informed of its progress. The stability of that Church was apparently shattered shortly after the death of James, when the Jews revolted against the Romans and ‘immediately Vespasian attacked them’. We hear no more about the Jerusalem Church directly from Hegesippus until he tells of a meeting convened to elect a successor to James, and Eusebius tells us that this meeting took place after Jerusalem had been taken in A.D. 70.

John Bramhall is perhaps best known today for his attempt to catch Hobbes's Leviathan: critical analysis of the work of the philosopher of Malmesbury was, however, but one field of literary endeavour for Bramhall. As befitted an Anglican bishop he also exchanged doctrinal buffets with both puritans and papists, and ardently embraced the royalist cause during the period of the Great Rebellion, suffering arraignment and exile in consequence. His most notable publication in this last connexion was The Serpent-Salve; or a Remedy for the biting of an Asp, which was published in 1643 with the aim of restoring to Englishmen that proper sense of the allegiance of a subject which some of them had so irrationally cast away, thereby plunging themselves (along with their fellow subjects) into what Bramhall called a ‘bottomless gulf of mischief'. An account of his royalism can thus appropriately centre itself upon this document while drawing also upon his other writings (in particular his Fair Warning to Take Heed of the Scottish Discipline of 1649) for additional illustrative material.