When first in the early autumn of 1918, it begun to occur to me that at some not very remote date I should once more have the duty and pleasure of delivering my annual address to the Society which has given me the honour of its presidential chair, I had intended to speak on a very academic topic—‘The Mediaeval Conception of History’. But as the months of victory wore on, and the collapse of the enemies of Great Britain became manifest, it grew more and more obvious that the only subject which the Society would wish to discuss at such a moment,—at the end of the greatest War that the world has ever seen,—would be ‘Peace and its Consequences’. I acknowledge myself wholly inadequate to take up such a burden: the brain reels when it tries to visualise as a whole the consequences of the triumph of the Allies.

As the present condition of the National Archives of the British Empire and its Allies was likely to become once more a matter of practical interest to historical students, the Council of the Royal Historical Society desired the Director to ask the favour of communications on this subject from Corresponding Fellows or other authorities. The following communications were laid before the Society on the above date. The Council contemplate inviting further communications during the Session of 1919–20, dealing with the Archives of the Dominions of the British Empire and some other Allied countries.1

The exercise of metropolitical jurisdiction by the Archbishops of Canterbury is of great interest. Sometimes in the course of their visitations, they came into conflict with the Bishops, sometimes with the King, and these proceedings throw a flood of light on the history of the medieval Church.

The origin of this paper on matters concerning Henry Cardinal York, the last representative of the main line of the Stuarts, is the purchase of a miscellaneous parcel of letters and papers belonging to the Morrison collection which was dispersed at Sotheby's in April, 1918. Apart from two autograph letters of the Cardinal, one of no special interest, and the other of rather unusual interest on account of its references to his brother Charles III, and also a letter of Louise, Countess of Albany, the wife of Charles III, the material proved on examination to consist mainly of letters, some originals and some copies, formerly belonging to Sir John Coxe Hippisley, Bt. This gentleman, a distinguished lawyer who was for many years engaged on sundry diplomatic missions for the British Government, was the person chiefly responsible for securing for Henry Cardinal York in his poverty and adversity in 1800 a pension from the British Government which he enjoyed until his death in 1807.

The attempt of George III to revive personal government tended to embitter politics and to accentuate the differences between the two rival parties in the State. At the same time the distrust existing between the various sections of the Whigs proved that personal animosities were unusually prominent. Conciliation seemed to be regarded as a sign of weakness, and the general antipathy to compromise was strengthened by the unpopular union of Fox and North in 1783. Consequently it proved impossible to form a real Coalition Government in 1794, when only the Portland Whigs joined Pitt's administration.

The history of science may be approached from two points of view. It may be regarded purely as growth of knowledge of natural objects and phenomena along the corridors of time, or it may be viewed selectively according to its influence upon social and economic conditions. Knowledge becomes power only when it is used. To trace the development of any particular aspect of it in scientific fields is the work of the specialist, but it is not until discoveries and the inventions to which they lead can be recognised as transforming factors in civilisation that the historian of human society is much concerned with them.

In the year 1829 the disputes between the Northern and the Southern Netherlands were rapidly coming to a head.

It will be remembered that shortly before the Congress of Chatillon was dissolved in March, 1814, the Allies having found it impossible to make peace with Napoleon, a secret article in the Treaty of Chaumont provided that Holland was to receive an increase of territory, and be erected into a kingdom for the Prince of Orange. After the abdication of Napoleon the Definitive Treaty of Peace with France, signed at Paris on May 30, 1814, carried the settlement of the Netherlands a step further by a secret article defining the increase of territory which Holland was to receive. Flanders and the other Belgian provinces, which had been taken from Austria by the armies of the French Revolution, were now, together with the Principality of Liege, to be joined to Holland, and the united countries were to constitute a Kingdom of the Netherlands under the sovereignty of the House of Orange.

The subject of my paper is the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh. I propose to confine what I have to say to that subject, and consequently to consider legal rather than historical matters, as far as the two can be distingished, but I hope that some of my audience may deal with the points that I may have to notice from that wider point of view which it is so necessary to take into account if our national system of law is to be properly appreciated.