In his Ymagines Historiarum, Ralph de Diceto paused in his chronicle of Henry II's reign to reflect on the circumstances and significance of the appointment of three chief justices of the realm in 1179. Ever anxious for the efficient and impartial administration of the law, Henry had diligently sought out lovers of justice who would not be corrupted by high office; he tried, without success, many classes of men: abbots, earls, tenants-in-chief, members of his household, even his closest personal advisers. When at last all else had failed, he raised his eyes to heaven; and, passing over those who could be swayed by worldly influences, he resorted to the sanctuary of God, and appointed as archjusticiars of his realm the bishops of Winchester, Ely and Norwich. If his earlier choices had shown too little respect for him, an earthly king, these at least would act in careful fear of God, the King of kings. And if it should be argued that in assuming this task the bishops would act in despite of the strict letter of canon law, there could be urged in reply the constraint of the king and his good intentions, pleasing alike to God and men.

It is now widely agreed that the economy of western Europe contracted in the later Middle Ages, but the causes of this depression and its time-limits are still disputed. Professor Postan argues that the depression was intimately connected with a decline in population beginning early in the fourteenth century and brought about by the operation of Malthusian checks and soil exhaustion. His argument may be briefly summarized. Population grew rapidly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the cultivated area was continuously extended. By 1300, however, both processes had gone too far. The plough had invaded marginal lands—in this context the term means poor lands—unsuited for permanent cultivation and subject to soil exhaustion. The precarious balance between population growth and the means of subsistence depended on the possibility of fresh colonization. When this was at an end, as it was, to all intents, by 1300, Europe was left with a population which it could not feed. Early in the fourteenth century, therefore—perhaps even in the 1290's—famine and disease brought about a long-continued rise in the death-rate, and this, later to be intensified by the plague, aggravated the decline in productivity. Thus the famine of the years 1315–17 was not merely a tragic episode of a kind likely to occur as long as the harvest of one year provided the bread of the next; it marked a turning-point in demographic history.

Who could have foreseen that even fifteen years after Peel's death, Peel's most ardent disciple would accept the lead of the House of Commons at the hands of one of Peel's more scornful foes? Seldom has a political combination been based upon wider differences of upbringing, character and belief, than that of Gladstone and Russell. Striking as it was that they should ever have formed a government, their ministry has not attracted much attention. It is not difficult to see why Gladstone's biographer, Morley, followed the example set by Lord John Russell's, Spencer Walpole, and passed hurriedly over an episode so brief and, apparently, so barren. Only one man has since had much to say about the eight months' ministry of 1865–66. In The Rise of Gladstone to the Leadership of the Liberal Party, W. E. Williams concluded that throughout 1866 Russell provided the inspiration, and that if Gladstone was a learner all his life ‘one of his wisest teachers was Lord John Russell’. Although I think one must be careful to distinguish between a man's receiving a letter and his being influenced by it, I do not wish to challenge this judgment on the events of 1865–66 so much as to elaborate it, by touching briefly on the whole relationship between the two men from the time Gladstone entered the House of Commons to the time Russell died, dividing it into four periods: from 1832 to 1855, from 1855 to 1865, from 1865 to 1866, and from 1866 to 1878.

Some illustrations of the existence of a conservative north are at once apparent on even the most superficial examination of Scottish history in the seventeenth century. No historian has failed to notice, for instance, the fact that the strongest opposition to the National Covenant was concentrated in and around Aberdeen. It was in Aberdeen that the ‘doctors’, or theological professors of the university, denounced the Covenant and challenged its spokesmen to a debate in July 1638, and it was in Aberdeenshire that the Marquis of Huntly remained an unrepentant royalist during the years of the Covenanters' ascendancy.

The most surprising feature of the Anglo-French negotiations of this period was that they ended in failure. The English king's enthusiasm for peace is too well-known to require comment. It is less often recognized that the French were equally eager. In an official memorandum drawn up for their ambassadors in 1390 it was stated that:

… en traictie de paix dentre si grans princes que les roys de france et dangleterre communement toutes rancunes et offences sont remises dune part et dautre, et retourne chacun en son ancien heritage.

God Almighty predestinated me to be the ame damnèe of France.’ So wrote Jeremy Bentham on 9 June 1789. It was a moment of frustration for a man who already felt a great opportunity slipping away from him. Opportunity above all was what the French Revolution meant for Bentham. Forty when the States General were summoned, he had for twenty years been convinced of his genius for legislation. Much of that time he had spent upon an immense but never completed Code of law. In 1785 he had gone to Russia, to join his brother Samuel and (he hoped) lay his Code before the Empress Catherine. But Catherine never saw either the Code or its author. Bentham remained secluded in western Russia, translating his work into French; and when the empress visited the district he stayed—stubbornly diffident—in his cottage.

Any attempt to discuss the reign of David II of Scotland is bound to be patchy and unsatisfactory because the evidence itself is so. There is for instance no good chronicle of the period. It is true that John of Fordun left some notes on the reign, through which he had lived; but his history was so largely de-voted to remoter and even mythical periods that he never worked up these notes into the history of his own times that he could have written. Later writers all based their work on his; they embroidered on what he wrote, but could not fill in the gaps. Hence the accounts that have survived of the reign consist of a number of isolated incidents rather than a continuous and intelligible narrative. Many more details can be discovered in the records of government, such as the Register of the Great Seal, the Exchequer Rolls, and the large number of surviving texts of the documents issued by David II; but these are again isolated scraps of evidence. What is missing is the framework into which this evidence needs to be fitted.

From the beginning of the revolutionary movement in Spanish America, wrote Sir Charles Webster, nearly thirty years ago, the influence of Great Britain was established ‘by two main agencies—her trade and her fleet’.