Writers in the early centuries of the Christian era were accustomed to employ the term διάκονος with either the masculine or the feminine definite article. In the former case it is to be translated ‘deacon’ and in the latter ‘female deacon’ or ‘deaconess’. This usage suggests a close relationship, if not an identity, between the diaconate and the order of deaconesses and it is the purpose of this Note to explore this subject, beginning with the vexed question of the obscure origin of this order for women.

Professor Margaret Deanesly and Père Grosjean have devoted some discussion to Dom Suso Brechter's study of the sources for the English mission of Gregory the Great. The debate which it has since provoked has centred almost exclusively on the question of the authenticity of the Responsa attributed to Gregory the Great in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People [H.E.], i, 27. Mr. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill has rightly insisted that ‘Dom Brechter's book discusses much more than the Gregorian Responsa’. It is my purpose in this paper to consider some of Dom Brechter's arguments concerning the course and the chronology of the English mission, and his attack on the accuracy of Bede's account and on his honesty.

GH. Williams and N. F. Cantor have both attempted in recent years to solve the problem of the authorship of the anonymous treatises of MS. C.C.C.415 and E. H. Kantorowicz has mapped out a place for him in the history of the development of political theory. The thirty-four tracts of this manuscript, with their variety of subject matter and lines of approach, including theocratic kingship, Gelasian political theory, neo-Donatism, bitter anti-Gregorianism and a nostalgia for the purity of the primitive church, present a fascinating puzzle in the history of Anglo-Norman Church-State relations. They have been considered by some to represent the earliest sparks of Wycliffism in England, and even to one writer the first indications of the peculiar ethos of the Anglican Communion.

The present interest in Puritanism has brought forth a large number of remarkable works dealing with the history of Puritanism as well as with puritan thought. Naturally enough, puritan covenant theology has also come in for treatment in many recent studies. However, English and American scholars have as a rule failed to contribute a satisfactory discussion of the idea of the covenant in puritan theologians. One principal reason for this failure is to be found in the fact that many of these scholars are primarily interested in sociology and less in theology. Another reason stems from the tendency to isolate the Puritans in England and New England from their English background as well as from their Continental forerunners and contemporaries. Interpretations which thus tend to neglect both theology and history necessarily lead to grave misunderstandings in the presentation of puritan covenant theology. The wellknown work of Perry Miller is typical in many respects. Miller presents his interpretation of the covenant in book IV under the general heading: Sociology! Although he seems to be aware of the existence of earlier covenant theology he tends to regard William Perkins as the inventor of the puritan concept of the covenant. In Miller's understanding covenant theology means essentially the puritan theologians' counter-action to tendencies within their own camp, viz., Arminianism and Antinomianism. This might be true for the period about 1650, but only then. Finally Miller regards covenant theology as implying a departure from essential Calvinism. This is also true to a certain extent but calls for a much more careful analysis than Miller's.

This article is a very tentative effort to analyse material on the clandestine marriages of Catholic recusants from the York ecclesiastical archives. We shall endeavour to discover how these marriages were conducted and how the parties were treated by the Anglican ecclesiastical authorities.