Kings' Briefs, under a variety of designations—as Kings' Letters, Orders in Council, Patents of Alms, Letters Patent, Fire Briefs, Church Briefs, Charity Briefs, Commissions, Royal Letters, &c, &c.—have played an important part in the social history of this country, and yet our national historians have been remarkably silent concerning them; as indeed they have been upon many other matters of great social interest. It seems hardly necessary to say that the term “Brief” has several significations. In its more common acceptation it is a short writing or epitome, as an abridgment of a law case, made out for instruction to counsel, or indeed any short statement of facts. But there are “Apostolical Briefs,” being letters or written messages of the Pope, addressed to princes or magistrates, respecting matters of public concern.* It is not to these exclusively that we must look for light in the present instance. The word was, in early times, written “Breve,” and Cowell, in his Law Dictionary, says, “Any writ or precept from the King was called Breve; which we still retain in the name of Brief, the King's Letters Patent to poor sufferers, for Collection.” The general title of “King's Briefs” used in England, is traceable to the fact that these documents, under whatever designation adopted, or for whatever purpose designed, were in later times issued under the direct authority of the sovereign; at first under his personal authority, but later under the authority of the Council, through the Lord Chancellor. But it will be made clear that the Church exercised the right of issuing them, not only prior to, but apparently coeval with the sovereign at one period.

In Japanese history, I am convinced the competent explorer will find, a rich fund of interesting material; and much that will prove important to the orientalist and historian.

In the paper I had the honour of reading before this society on a previous occasion, I alluded to the early explorers and adventurers, whose efforts were directed towards “Japan,” no doubt incited by the accounts of Marco Polo, and other early voyagers and travellers. Numerous efforts were made by private individuals, as well as by the heads of great nations, to open up fresh routes. I am strongly of opinion that justice is not done to the intelligence and energy of these early explorers, whom it has been but too general a fashion to call buccaneers. Few written accounts have come down to us of the earlier explorers and adventurers. Few men of those times had the literary talent, even if they had the will, to have their adventures put down in writing; but there are other and more cogent reasons why so little has been handed down to us.

At the present time, when the Parochial Registers of this country are attracting more than usual notice, I think the following excerpts from the first volume of those of the Parish of Penrith, in the county of Cumberland, may not be uninteresting.

In the time before the building of theatres the men's companies used to act in inn-yards on temporary stages; but the boys' companies seem to have had more permanent arrangements. The Paul's boys, for instance, acted in a singing room of their own till they were inhibited in 1589, and again from 1599 to 1606: the children of the Chapel also, in my opinion, acted in the Blackfriars building many years before it was rebuilt as a private theatre in 1596. But it is not with these temporary arrangements that this paper is concerned.

Although the results in this paper may appear to be novel, and are largely derived from sources newly opened up, in reality they are only the sequence of previous investigations. Long since there were published by me in the Journal of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and of the Anthropological Institute, and also in the Transactions of this Royal Historical Society, a list of place names. These tables showed the identity of the ancient names of cities in the Old World from India to Britain, and of those in the New World in wide regions.

We have now arrived at the concluding epoch among those which I have marked out in taking a survey of the different periods in the Domestic History of this country, and of the Pursuits and Modes of Life of our Forefathers; and in the present paper I shall endeavour to trace the course of civilization down to the era in which we are now living.

The compromise between the ecclesiastical and civil powers of the Western Empire, effected at Worms (1122), did not touch the Byzantines. The Roman world, still nominally one, had indeed for 300 years and more maintained the some-what artificial position which obliged the West largely to ignore the East; and then led the East to regard the West as little more than a dependency. This had grown to be, in many ways, inevitable, even from the time of the Diocletian arrangement of the Empire; and it acquired special force amidst the various partitionings of Constantine's descendants and successors.

I propose, with your kind permission to offer some observations upon the close analogy which existed between Jewish and Christian Baptism in the Apostolic Age, and in doing so I will consider this question in its purely historical aspect, without raising, certainly without desiring to raise, any of those issues which belong to the field of religious controversy, and which would necessarily be out of place in such a Society as ours.

The life and labours of John Eliot, together with those of his Nazing associates, occupy no small space in the evangelical annals of New England. As a pioneer and reformer, Eliot stands prominent among the settlers and founders of the New World, surrounded and supported by a galaxy of Essex Nonconformists of the purest type.

The noblest inheritance we Americans derive from our British ancestors is the memory and example of the great and good men who adorn your history. They are as much appreciated and honoured on our side of the Atlantic as on this. In giving to the English-speaking world Washington and Lincoln we think we repay, in large part, our obligation. Their pre-eminence in American history is recognised, and the republic, which the one founded and the other preserved, has already crowned them as models for her children.