The death, on 27 July, 1944, on his 87th birthday, as a consequence of enemy action, of Hubert Hall has deprived the Royal Historical Society of one of its most beloved members, one, too, who had perhaps the largest share in shaping its history. He died from shock, following the explosion of a flying bomb which severely damaged his house at Walderslade, near Chatham.

There is always an artificial character about the anniversary of a publication. However original a book or article may be, it never appears out of a void. If its subject is history, it is bound to reflect conclusions reached through previous research, and ideas which are the common property of scholars. It is in a sense the product of its time, and the moment of its appearance is an accident. But for all this, a series of publicationdates provides a rough index to the course of historical inquiry, and it becomes of more than bibliographical interest when it shows a number of independent but related lines of research brought to their conclusion within a single year. It is, no doubt, easy to exaggerate the significance of such dates, but the end of one set of investigations is commonly the beginning of another, and each of these fortunate years is in fact a cardinal point in the chronology of historical writing. By those whose interests lie in early English history it should certainly be reckoned a fortunate year which produced, exactly half a century ago, The Crawford Collection of early Charters and Documents edited by A. S. Napier and W. H. Stevenson, The History of English Law by F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, and Feudal England by J. H. Round.

SOME apology may seem necessary for a brief paper that covers nearly three centuries, but, unless we take long views, we are unlikely to get into focus the problem before us, namely, the extent to which the commons participated in medieval politics and the manner in which they did so. Bishop Stubbs, you will remember, found this a matter of particular difficulty. The part played by the commons in relation to taxation and legislation seemed plain enough. But political power, the ‘right of general deliberation on all national matters, is too vague in its extent’, he thought, ‘to be capable of being chronologically defined; nor was it really vindicated by the parliament until a much later period than’ the reign of Edward I, with which he was then concerned. Elsewhere, Stubbs seems to have committed himself to the view that the commons took part in politics in the fifteenth century, although the distinction he formerly drew between politics and legislation he no longer maintained. Quite clearly we cannot consistently maintain a distinction between politics and legislation or politics and finance. ‘The right of deliberation on all national matters’, in Stubbs's phrase, may express itself in the acceptance or refusal of legislative or of financial proposals. But if there are certain national matters from the discussion of which one or other of the ‘estates’ is in practice excluded, then it is reasonable to say that, to that extent, they take no part in politics. To suggest an obvious example: the assent of the lower clergy was necessary to the taxation to which they were subjected; they took no part in general legislation; and they certainly did not exercise the right of deliberation on all national matters. Their participation in politics was therefore of the slightest.

Macaulay paid every schoolboy the compliment of attributing to him an omniscience which a man of learning might well envy; in what I am about to say this afternoon I fear that I may be going to the opposite extreme and expounding as new, facts with which some of my audience may have been familiar from their youth up. But if I make this mistake, I must plead in extenuation the way in which the medieval chantry has so far been treated. For, whilst almost every other aspect of medieval life has been studied as, at least to some extent, a European phenomenon, the chantry, though its prevalence throughout western Europe has been well known and its importance in the life of the later middle ages generally recognized, has been studied as a matter of local, or at most of national, history, and in many cases antiquarian or genealogical interests have been allowed to obscure the broader ecclesiastical and constitutional questions which it raises or helps to elucidate.

The use of French in England during the later middle ages has frequently been discussed, but rather surprisingly a large body of relevant documents has hitherto been almost entirely neglected. The documents in question throw much light both on the purposes for which French was used in this country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and on the classes who employed it, and show that its use was more widespread and that it persisted longer than is generally supposed.

British intustry is so wide and varied that there will always be danger of narrowness in studying it in the form of regional history. Local patriotism and the antiquarian spirit judge many details interesting which no one unfamiliar with the district can by any stretch of the imagination find instructive or profitable. Besides, the causes of economic progress or decay, which are, or ought to be, the main object of investigations of this sort, cannot be pieced out wholly from the experience of anyone part of the country or any particular industry or group of industries. The most that can reasonably be hoped is that the history of the district chosen will bring into relief some special angle of the general economic problem.

Though the operations of the Christian missionary societies in the nineteenth century are in a general way well known, very rarely do we find a satisfying account of the transition among the native peoples of the mission fields from their old magico-religious beliefs to Christianity. The histories of the missionary societies are full and well documented, but they take too much for granted. The anthropologists give us ideas for which we must be grateful, but we cannot expect them to do the historian's work for him. And surely this subject is of general historical interest.

My title is already long. Yet it does not say all that it should. My proper subject is certain aspects of the writing of American history in the United States during the last three-quarters of a century. But in order to deal with that I must say much that applies with equal force to American historiography at large during that period. In so doing, I run the risk of leaving, a false impression. There is a danger that I may suggest that the events of the earlier years, where I am speaking of what is more general, had issue in the later in something much narrower than was in fact the case. But that which I leave out will be much more familiar to my audience than it is to me; and it may be sufficient if I say that when I turn away from the general subject of the writing of history in the United States to the more particular one of the writing of American history, I do so not unaware, and trusting my audience to be much more fully aware, of the parallel cultivation by American historians of other fields of historical investigation.