In previous Addresses I have spoken of Thucydides, Tacitus, Herodotus, and Aristotle, with special reference to the amount of light to be gained from their writings by the modernstatesman. To-day I propose to take for my subject a far less famous personage, but one who should certainly not be passed over without some notice, by anybody who is interested in the contributions made by the ancient world to political thought.

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.

My subject obviously deserves a skilled advocate to present it to the public, but as a professional historical student speaking to historical students I may be pardoned if I attempt only the plainest exposition, and ‘let me find a charter in your voice to assist my simpleness.’

Of the great fleet of 130 sail that left Corunna for England on July 12, 1588, 65 vessels, exactly one-half, perished. At least 32 of these foundered with all hands in the wild gales of the North Atlantic, where, when, and how will now never be revealed. Of the remaining 33, two were lost on the Hebrides, but no particulars are known, two were disabled and abandoned in the Channel, five were subsequently lost on the coast of France, two were crippled in the fighting in the North Sea and drifted on to the Dutch coast, one was lost at Bigbury Bay, Devon, and two perished on their return to Spain. Full particulars of all these ships except those lost on the Hebrides are known. The remaining 19 vessels were wrecked off the Orkneys and the rugged coast of Ireland. At what places and under what circumstances most of them perished has never yet been satisfactorily established. This is not surprising, for several reasons. It will be seen that most of the places mentioned in the Irish State Papers as the scenes of wrecks are not identifiable on modern maps, not only the names of villages but the names and divisions of districts and counties having been greatly changed. It will be seen, also, that the somewhat meagre reports sent by the Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam, and the Presidents of the provinces, are vague as to the localities of the wrecks, and in nearly every case are silent as to the names of the ships.

The object of the present paper is to call attention to a class of documents which seem hitherto to have escaped much notice from economic historians, but which, it is thought, may throw light on the agrarian transitions which took place in England during the sixteenth century. The documents in question date from the reign of Elizabeth, and are termed by their compilers Libri supervisionis, or surveys. An examination of their contents shows that the name is justly applied; for they are not merely rentals or terriers, such as landowners in all ages have frequently compiled as evidence of the value or extent of their estates, but elaborate topographical descriptions, furlong by furlong, and strip by strip, of complete villages, extending sometimes in length to a hundred pages of manuscript. Herein lies their interest ; for, as the surveys are not confined to particular estates or particular manors, but make the complete circuit of the villages, giving the abuttals and compass bearings of the various parcels of land, only patience and ingenuity are required to compile a tolerably accurate map of each village as it was at the date of the surveyor's visit; and Elizabethan maps are not of such every day occurrence as to render their recovery a matter of indifference. Of course in some cases owing either to ignorance of the size and shape of the wastes, or to the complete obliteration of old landmarks by parliamentary enclosures, it may be difficult to compile a map ; but even in these cases the surveys themselves cannot fail to be illuminating, containing as they do a detailed statement of the arrangements of each village such as can nowhere else be obtained.

From Hildebrand to John Stuart Mill is a far cry. Yet there is a common element in the thought of the two. Both held the same purely secular theory of the civil State. Both were jealous of State interference and would have narrowed the scope of governmental action. Both held that there are limits, especially in religious matters, which the State may not over-step, and both, though in different ways, would admit the right of an oppressed people to rebel against its sovereign. Their horizons were different, and their objects looked at in one point of view are even opposed. For Mill believed in the Divine right of the individual, or something like it, while, if Hildebrand would have bound kings with chains, it was only that he might forge more enduring fetters of iron for their peoples. Yet I believe that there are links of connection between the two; and of these the earlier Jesuits were not the least important. From the days of Hildebrand down to our own time there appear to me to have been two mutually opposed theories of the State, taking different shapes according to the needs of different ages, and defended by controversial methods and arguments which changed with the facts to which they owed their force. Indeed, so Protean were their manifestations that they commonly meet with nothing but contempt from us who owe much to both theories, and have entered into the heritage prepared for us by conflicts of which we have forgotten the meaning.

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.

The conference of Pillnitz, although it occupies an important place in all histories of the French Revolution, is still the subject of much misconception amongst historians. Immediately after it was held, a person so well informed as Mr. Burges, the English Under-Secretaryfor Foreign Affairs, believed that it resulted in a kind of treaty between Austria and Prussia for the dismemberment of France, and it was long regarded as the beginning of the first Coalition.

Inthe year 1663 Captain, afterwards Vice-Admiral, Sir Robert Holmes, during a timeof profound peace, attacked and captured the Dutch possessions on the West Coast of Africa. Sailing across the Atlantic, he reduced the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, and rechristened it, in honour of the Duke of York, New York. On his return to England he was denounced by the Dutch as a freebooter, and thrown into prison, but on the outbreak of hostilities was released andrestored to his rank, in which he long gave his country the benefit of his eminent abilities.