DominusRex et Regina mandarunt hie breue suum sub Magno Sigillo suo Thesaurario et Baronibus huius scaccarii directum Cuiusquidem breuis tenor sequitur in hec verba. Philippus et Maria dei gracia Rex et Regina Anglie His-paniarum Francie vtriusque Sicilie Ierusalem et Hibernie fidei defensores Archiduces Austrie Duces Burgundie Mediolani et Brabancie Comites Haspurgi Flandrie et Tirolis Thesaurariis et Baronibus suis de Scaccario salutem Tenorem cuiusdam certificacionis coram nobis in Cancellaria nostra retornate ac in filaciis eiusdem Cancellarie nostre de Recordo residentis vobis Mittimus presentibus interclusum Mandantes vt inspecto tenore certificacionis predicte vlterius inde pro nobis fieri faciatis prout de iure et secundum legem et consuetudinem Regni nostri Anglie fuerit faciendum. Testibus nobis ipsis apud Westmonasterium xxijdo die Octobris Annis regnorum nostrorum tercio et quarto. Wa. Hare. Et tenor certificacionis vnde in brevi predicto superius fit Mencio sequitur in hec verba.

Portraits and biographies play a central role in engaging non-specialists with the past, and hence invite careful scrutiny. Major enterprises, such as the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Dictionary of National Biography, in both its original and Oxford versions, provide rich examples for reflecting on public history and on the relationships between types of writing about past times. These issues relate to literature as well as to history, given the prominence of biographies of literary figures, and the role of literary scholars as authors of biographies. Using materials concerning the artist John Collier (1850–1934), the publisher George Smith (1824–1901) and the surgeon James Paget (1814–1899), this article examines the relationships between portraits and biographies and the types of insight they afford. Colin Matthew's innovation of including portraits in the Oxford Dictionary, together with his own scholarship on William Gladstone (1809–1898), including his portraits, provide the basis for suggestions about the role of work when representing lives, including those of historians. Public history can only benefit from research practices being discussed in an accessible manner, as attempted here.

At the end of the eleventh century, in the wake of the First Crusade, a Latin principality was established at Antioch, in northern Syria. Founded by the crusade leader Bohemond (1098–,c. 1105), this Latin community experienced a period of territorial expansion under the energetic rule of his nephew, Tancred (c. 1105–12), followed by seven years of less aggressive leadership by Roger of Salerno (1113–19). The principality suffered a serious setback with the defeat of its army at the evocatively named battle of the Field of Blood in 1119, during which Prince Roger was slain. Power then passed to a regent, King Baldwin II of Jerusalem (1118–31), until Bohemond II (1126–30), the son of Antioch's first prince, arrived in northern Syria.

Any attempt to discuss the reign of David II of Scotland is bound to be patchy and unsatisfactory because the evidence itself is so. There is for instance no good chronicle of the period. It is true that John of Fordun left some notes on the reign, through which he had lived; but his history was so largely de-voted to remoter and even mythical periods that he never worked up these notes into the history of his own times that he could have written. Later writers all based their work on his; they embroidered on what he wrote, but could not fill in the gaps. Hence the accounts that have survived of the reign consist of a number of isolated incidents rather than a continuous and intelligible narrative. Many more details can be discovered in the records of government, such as the Register of the Great Seal, the Exchequer Rolls, and the large number of surviving texts of the documents issued by David II; but these are again isolated scraps of evidence. What is missing is the framework into which this evidence needs to be fitted.

It was not until the twenty-fifth and last session of the Council of Trent, in 1563, that the assembled Fathers made reference to the arts, and that only in very general terms: ‘The Council forbids placing in churches any image which illustrates false doctrine and can mis-lead the simple … it forbids placing in any church even if it is not subject to diocesan visitation, any unusual image, unless it has been approved by the bishop’. The Council recommended the retention of images in churches, but otherwise its decree was purely negative. It did not contemplate using religious art as one of the weapons of controversy in its war against Protestantism. That was to come later.

Early in the seventeenth century an English or Scottish buccaneer settled with a few companions at the mouth of a river in a deserted section of the coast of Central America. The man's name was Wallace, called ‘Valis’ or ‘Balis’ by the Spaniards. The river to which he gave his name was the Belize river, and the settlement which he founded ultimately became, in 1862, the colony of British Honduras.

I must begin this paper by disclaiming any intention of entering into the detail of parliamentary procedure, a matter with which I am not qualified to deal. It has, however, occurred to me that certain changes in the administration of law, changes which begin early in the reign of Henry III, have some relevance to the origin of parliamentary jurisdiction. These changes arise from a new and more severe attitude on the part of the Crown towards franchise, and make necessary important modifications in the exchequer's methods of dealing with it. In time, I think, the many disputes between the Crown and the magnates about privilege, debt, and so forth, gave rise to a volume of petitions and subsequent trials which called for some tribunal in the nature of parliament, and these trials found a nucleus about the exchequer and the council. That is my thesis, and it is with these legal changes and their reaction upon the constitution that I propose to deal. The greater part of this paper is, therefore, concerned with the period before direct parliamentary record, and, indeed, before there is any true court of parliament. It goes very little beyond matters of law, and, if I am forced here and there to refer to the structure and procedure of parliament in later days, I do so very much subject to correction. Even for the early period with which I am concerned, I cannot attempt to assess the importance of that part of parliament which came from the commune consilium of the realm.

A complaint frequently voiced by historians of Jacobitism is that their subject is plagued by a breed of authors with a passion for secret agents, romantic uprisings, and princes in the heather. It is not so often admitted, however, just how intractable the professionals themselves find the topic and their substantial failure to give any coherent account of it. Jacobitism appears as the major issue in British politics in the early-eighteenth century; it was associated with wide-spread disorder, recurrent national crises, and a series of rebellions and attempted invasions; but its actual organization and the extent of its support remains surprisingly obscure. This is partly so because the source-material is notoriously difficult to handle and ranges from a mass of ciphered correspondence in the Stuart papers to the diplomatic archives of half-a-dozen European states. To study it is to enter a world both of illusion and deliberate misrepresentation. Would-be revolutionaries tended to imagine themselves perpetually on the verge of success, while it often suited the interests of the British government to assert that the nation was threatened with subversion and imminent invasion. But the weakness of Jacobite historiography is more fundamental than a problem with the sources. It lies in an addiction to detailed narrative unsupported by adequate analysis and a fixed assumption that the importance of the movement was its potential for effecting a revolution by armed force. This paper adopts a different approach. It examines the structure of the Jacobite organization and questions whether it was at any time between 1710 and 1715 capable of realising its aims; it argues rather that its activities contributed to a great popular myth, which was to be of critical significance in the struggle of men and parties which preceded the establishment of the Whig oligarchy.

The proposed amalgamation of the Royal Historical Society with the Camden Society, from which we hope to see many advantages to both, has led me to submit for consideration a scheme in which both societies might collaborate for the preparation of a competent Bibliography of English History. All students are aware how singularly deficient is our liferature in the department of historical bibliography. France and Germany have now been working in this field with great industry, and more or less success, for more than a century. They have shown us many lacuncæ and not a few errors to avoid; and we may now, at any rate, perceive what schemes are impracticable and what are useless. England, which has with such energy, and I venture to think with such signal success, laboured on a series of exhaustive Calendars of her Manuscript authorities, has been curiously slow to set about a scientific bibliography of the published materials of her own history.

There are three main questions relating to the first phase of English history on which the evidence supplied by place-names may be expected to throw a faint ray of light. On the first of them—the fate of the native inhabitants of southern Britain—I offered a few suggestions to the Society in my presidential address last year. I propose this evening to confine myself to place-names of English origin, and to consider them in relation to the two fundamental problems which remain—the credibility of Bede's analysis of the English peoples, and the general chronology of the English conquest.

This résumé of some of the problems connected with the life of Richard de Bury is complementary to three noteworthy articles by Father Ghellinck in the Révue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique for 1922-3, in which he used the Philobiblon and an abundance of other literary and record sources to place the Bishop in his setting as the greatest bibliophile of medieval Europe. That admirable contribution to the history of literature and manuscripts still leaves room, however, for some remarks on the history of Bury's life, as civil servant, diplomat, and patron of letters; and this will involve a discussion of his Liber Epistolaris.

The reign of Richard II. is a landmark in the political and constitutional history of England, and in the history of her church and people. At home it was an era of corrupt party politics which led to the crisis of 1399; abroad, there was a lull in the great French war; and already the victories of Edward III. and the Black Prince had initiated the course of events which were to make England an insular power, and her government a limited monarchy. Social and religious discontent joined hands in Wat Tyler's revolt, when the causes of Labour and Nonconformity made their first loud claim to the right of existence in England. In the following pages, however, we are concerned less with the history of the reign as a whole, than with the interesting personality of the boy-King. King and kingdom were closely bound up with one another in the Plantagenet epoch; and the unequal and ill-regulated character of Richard II. has left no uncertain impress upon the events of his reign. And here the historical student is brought face to face with the unsatisfactory condition of the original authorities. The whole reign abounds in political mysteries, and the figure of the young King is shrouded in obscurity.

Malta, formerly called Melita, is an island of great value and strength. Oval in figure, its area would probably be found to involve the measure of one hundred square miles. Separated from Gozzo—the fabled isle of Calypso, by a channel between four and five miles broad, in the centre of which is an islet called Cumino or Cumina, it seems likely that at some remote period the three islands constituted one. In many parts of Gozzo excavations have led to such important discoveries that this smaller island is by many deemed a fine field in which lovers of antiquities would reap signal success: especially in reference to the period when Gozzo, as well as Malta, was under the sovereignty of the Knights.

The most significant feature of the baronial movement of 1258 is that it was the first deliberate and conscious political revolution in English history. The Angevin system of government, essentially a centralised despotism grafted on to the stock of a primitive national monarchy and growing within the framework of a feudal society, was transformed, at the Parliament of Oxford, into a limited monarchy based on written constitution. The entire power and authority of the crown, in every sphere of government, was put into commission and vested in a privy council of fifteen magnates, selected, not by the king, but by a sub-committee appointed by a committee of the great council; and for nearly two years England was successfully governed and reformed by this nominated privy council, which acted throughout in virtue of the mandate expressed in the Provisions of Oxford, regarding itself as representative of and responsible to the great council. In the king's own words, the Council of Fifteen treated him as a minor under their wardship, settling affairs of state without his presence, and without having asked him to attend, issuing orders without awaiting his authorisation, ignoring his views, and merely replying ‘Nous volons qe issy soit’, without any further explanation, when he remonstrated; they passed over his nominees for offices high and low, appointing others against his will; they used his great seal without consulting him, and denied him all use of it; in fact, they so far diminished his royal power and dignity that little or nothing was done at his command, and his orders were neglected as though it were the council that reigned.

The title of this essay can be interpreted in two ways. One possibility might be to show how our times in their thinking, patterns of behaviour, and institutional structures still continue to be shaped by that distant era of the Middle Ages. In other words, one could show the lingering impact of the Middle Ages until the present day. This sort of approach brings many things to mind: the division of Europe into East and West, through the Roman and the Byzantine church; medieval philosophy and the influential reception of Roman law and its effects which can still be discerned today; knighthood and courtly culture; the development of the ‘modern’ state; the continuing influence of social groups and their systems of values and institutions such as vassalage, the university, and the city state; and last but not least, the division into competing states and nations that is so distinctive for Europe.