On previous occasions I have chosen as the subject of my address at the annual meeting of this Society a historical theme suggested by my studies. Three historical addresses, each of which involved careful preparation, are, I venture to think, as many as a President of the Society need feel it his duty to deliver. Yet I think that I should have inflicted a fourth upon the Society if some special considerations had not combined to divert me from what is certainly the safer, and is perhaps the more profitable course. Moreover, it so happens that the period of my presidency has been a time of significant development in the organisation of historical study in this country. The history of this Society has been affected by the general movement. We have tried deliberately to adjust ourselves to it, and to take a leading part in it. I decided, therefore, to make my last appearance in the chair an occasion for a review of current developments and for some reflections upon them.

Queen Victoria wrote in a famous letter to her grandson William II, on June 12th 1899: “I never personally attacked or complained of Prince Bismarck, though I knew well what a bitter enemy he was to England and all the harm he did.” Why did Queen Victoria call Bismarck “a bitter enemy to England”? Obviously her remark was meant in a purely political sense. It was well known, as well to Queen Victoria as to anyone else in that period, that Prince Bismarck had a strong personal liking for England. He had known English and indeed had spoken the language well as a youth, not as well as he spoke French later on, but we have it from reliable witnesses that he was quite able to express himself fluently. There were times when he would hesitate, and instead of the ordinary word would find a most original and telling phrase. Lord Goschen, too, has borne witness to “his racy style of speech.” Until he reached old age Bismarck displayed an astonishing intimacy with Shakespeare and was very fond of Walter Scott.

The manning of the navy in the West Indies presented a great administrative difficulty to the English and French Governments in the eighteenth century, and brought them into conflict with several important interests. These conflicts are worth examination, because they throw light upon the problems which arose when the claims of war and business had to be adjusted to each other.

The reputation of John Erskine, nth Earl—and in the Jacobite Peerage 1st Duke—of Mar, has never stood very high. The incompetence that he showed as leader of the rising of 1715 left him but a scanty title to fame, and his conduct during the sixteen years which he spent in exile was so bitterly criticised by his enemies within the Jacobite party that he is generally remembered only for the ineptitude he displayed as a military commander and political conspirator. Even when anything is known of his subsequent career, it is usually something to his discredit, and the old stories are still in circulation: indeed, the latest biographers of The Old Chevalier go so far as to describe Mar as a “rat,” and call him the “evil genius” of his master. A study of some of the sources for Jacobite History after the '15, and particularly of the Stuart MSS. at Windsor Castle, seems to suggest, however, that Mar has been somewhat maligned and misunderstood in the past. The Stuart Papers, now in part printed by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, certainly throw fresh light on many aspects of Jacobite politics, and in this age of “Historical Revisions” it is but just that Mar should receive his due measure of attention.

Thex period 1772–84 was the formative period of British Indian history. During these years Indian affairs were constantly before Parliament; the questions of the relation of the East India Company to the State, and of the home to the Indian administration were dealt with, and the system of government instituted in 1784 was not fundamentally changed until 1858.

It is with the greatest diffidence that I venture to present a paper upon a subject which has attracted the attention of a line of eminent historians and genealogists, but still remains one of the most obscure in twelfth-century history. No subject could be more tantalising for an historian than the career of Ranulf de Gernons, fourth earl of Chester. Its importance is manifest in the history of the palatine earldom; in the history of a great Welsh resurgence; in the history of Stephen's England, where the extent of the earl's hereditary possessions and his policy of self-aggrandisement and consistent inconstancy made him a dominating factor in the political and military situation; and above all it is of absorbing interest to the student of feudalism.

This résumé of some of the problems connected with the life of Richard de Bury is complementary to three noteworthy articles by Father Ghellinck in the Révue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique for 1922-3, in which he used the Philobiblon and an abundance of other literary and record sources to place the Bishop in his setting as the greatest bibliophile of medieval Europe. That admirable contribution to the history of literature and manuscripts still leaves room, however, for some remarks on the history of Bury's life, as civil servant, diplomat, and patron of letters; and this will involve a discussion of his Liber Epistolaris.

The chronology of labour services in the Middle Ages has been agitating agrarian historians for nearly a hundred years. In view of this it is surprising to find how many of the dates are still a matter of assumption. On the whole, economic historians know much more about the final demise of labour dues than about their previous history. They may disagree as to the exact dates of the fourteenth-century commutation, or as to the extent to which England had been manorialised and was therefore likely to be affected by the dissolution of the manor.