The year which has passed since I last had the honour of addressing you at an anniversary meeting has been one of unusual importance in the history of our Society; it has seen the fulfilment of one of your Council's chief desires on its behalf. We have entered on the possession of a home, suitable to our purposes, not unworthy of our position as a Royal Society, and secured to us on terms which render it virtually permanent. Before this most desirable change in our circumstances, we were in the nomadic era of our existence, though we enjoyed none of the advantages properly belonging to such a stage in social development: we had neither ample space, picturesque surroundings, nor freedom from encumbrances. Many of you can recollect the unseemly and uncomfortable quarters that we so long occupied in St. Martin's Lane. It is not a pleasant remembrance, though there was good work done there, and we, alas! miss some valued fellow-workers who then adorned our Society, and have since passed away. We were glad to move into Old Serjeants' Inn in 1901. There at least we were more fitly lodged, and had a place which we could call our own, but, as I said last year at our anniversary meeting, our rooms were too small for us; there was no space for additions to our library; our tenancy had become terminable on three months' notice, and we knew that the building in which we were lodged was doomed to speedy destruction.

There are two different dates in the reign of Henry VIII. at which historians relate, on the authority of early chronicles, that the French landed at Brighton, then called Bright-hampstead or Brighthelmstone, and burned the town. The first was in the spring of 1514, the sixth year of the reign, and the second was in July 1545, the thirty-seventh year of the reign. The contemporary picture-map, of which a copy stands before you, would seem, by an inscription upon it, to be a representation of the latter event. But the inscription, I may say at once, does not appear to be in a handwriting quite of Henry VIII.'s time, and it is one object of this paper to show that the conflagration depicted is the one of 1514. Further, I may say that it appears to me very questionable whether the burning in 1545 was an actual fact at all.

It is assuredly a memorable fact that the beginning of our history, which has been in many ways unmatched, should be closely associated with a personage so deservedly famous and so great as Julius Caesar. These islands were known to the geographers of an earlier age, and had been visited by merchants and other adventurous people, but they were rather the homes of wondrous tales and of romantic legends than treated as parts of the world of which the philosopher or the statesman need take account.

In a paper read before the Royal Historical Society in its last session I traced the northern policy of George I. to the time that the news arrived of the death of Charles XII. of Sweden, ending with the treaty of Vienna signed by Austria, Hanover and Saxony on January 5, 1719. My present paper has for its subject the peace-making which necessarily followed the death of Charles, a peace-making conducted by George I. in accordance with his own views, as modified by the necessity of consulting the wishes of the regent of France and by the recalcitrance of Denmark.

When you, sir, were good enough to invite me to read a paper to the Society over which you preside, I was divided between gratification and alarm. To these conflicting emotions is now added a feeling of sympathy for the audience on which I shall have to inflict many dry details. Let me begin cy reassuring you with respect to the title of the paper. ‘Some early Spanish historians’ sounds vague and formidable. ‘Some’ might mean almost any number; but one has to select, and I shall deal with only three. It may be objected that I speak of Spain as existing in the thirteenth century, whereas Spain was not a political unit till near the end of the fifteenth century. There is a good deal of force in this objection, and I feel bound to meet it, as far as I can. In the first place, ‘Spain’ is a more convenient expression than the triple forms of Castile, León and Aragón, or Navarre, Catalonia and Valencia; and, in the second place, the sentiment of Spanish nationality existed long before complete political unity was actually achieved. Let me try to show this.

Roughly speaking the modern history of Anglo-Portuguese commerce falls into two distinct parts, the period before and after the momentous treaty of 1654.

From the end of the fifteenth century up to 1580 the commercial interests of England and Portugal were overshadowed by their rivalry for the trade of Africa, As yet, England put forward little claim to a share in the riches of the East. Henry VIII. did, indeed, attempt to bargain with the Portuguese king for a part in one of the Portuguese expeditions to India. His overtures were rejected, however, and the English concentrated their attention on the trade with Africa. But the Portuguese guarded their possessions in Barbary and Guinea as jealously as their treasure-house in the East. By the middle of the sixteenth century the question grew acute. Philip and Mary forbade their subjects to trade in places under the king of Portugal's government. The merchants ingenuously pleaded that they did no such thing; they merely lay in their ships off the coast, and the natives came to them in boats and traded with them: but even this innocent performance was forbidden by Queen Mary, under the influence of Philip, the natural champion of colonial monopoly.

Notes on the Diaries of Sir Justinian Isham, the fifth baronet of Lamport, would hardly be complete unless allusion were made to the origin of his house. He and his forefathers were ever careful to make a note of every family event, whether christening or burial, the building of a house, the planting of trees or the making of a pond. Sir Justinian added to the materials already to hand, and with the help of many friends among clergy and laity, including John Bridges, the Northamptonshire historian, he made collections from parish registers, wills, and other sources. From these he carefully put together the family pedigree, marking as certain that only for which he had ample evidence. His pedigree, representing the family tradition, has lately been proved to be correct in several steps; possibly the earlier portion may yet be confirmed. A manorial family of Isham dwelt at Isham from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. Isham is a village on the Isebrook. It has been suggested that in the fess wavy of the arms of the family there is an allusion to the brook, and that in the piles wavy we may see the icicles which play upon the name of the house.

Three years ago I read a paper to this Society on the subject of the minority of Henry III. Part of that paper was published in a somewhat enlarged form in the ‘Transactions’ of the Society for 1904, and part was reserved for publication in a subsequent volume. To-night I shall read some introductory words which I was then obliged to omit They are concerned partly with the authorities for the period, and partly with the state of political feeling in the early years of the reign.

The documents printed below from the originals in the possession of Mr. J. W. Ford, J.P., of Enfield Old Park, by whom they were kindly communicated to the Society, have some interest in connexion with an obscure aspect of the ecclesiastical government of the later Tudor and early Stuart periods.