Until a few years ago, it was customary to assume that the pre-Conquest Church in England enjoyed two golden ages—between the arrival of Theodore of Tarsus and the death of Bede, and the age of St. Dunstan; and that from Bede's death until the Danish invasions, and from the death of Dunstan until the Norman Conquest, the Church stagnated and even declined. Justice has now been done to the last phase of the Anglo-Saxon Church. More tentatively it has been suggested that its shortcomings in the eighth and ninth centuries were less serious than had once been supposed. It is the purpose of this paper to question whether for the earlier period the process of rehabilitation has gone for enough.

During the fourteenth century, Florence was one of the main centres of the republican regime in Italy, and the Florentines were increasingly aware of this position in a country which had come to a large extent under the sway of the Signoria. Florence herself had, on two occasions during the first half of the century, direct experience of the new regime: in a moderate form during the rule of the duke of Calabria (1325–8), and in its full strength during the short-lived Signoria of the duke of Athens (1342–3). The reaction in favour of the traditional communal form of government had been vigorous in both cases, but particularly so after the expulsion of the duke of Athens. The shock which the Florentines received from the events of 1342–3 helped to strengthen their loyalty to their traditional institutions and liberties for a long time to come.

Every modern war brings to the forefront the fundamental problem of the relations between the highest civil and the highest military authority. The German Empire never succeeded in solving this problem.

Historians have long been concerned with the circumstances in which the Hundred Years War began, and their interest shows no sign of slackening. During the present century not a little has been added to our knowledge of the matter through the labours of scholars in this country, in the United States and on the continent. This means that by now a formidable array of evidence bearing on the subject has been brought to light, while numerous books and articles, packed with comment and explanation, lie ready to hand. It is true that important sources still remain unprinted, although not unused, but the scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made available most of the chronicles and some of the records, while more documents have steadily found their way into print during the last fifty years

The half-century which followed the capture of Jamaica in 1655 was characterized by the consolidation rather than by the expansion of the English interest in the West Indies. In the political sphere this consolidation took several forms. The acquisition of Jamaica, by far the largest English West Indian colony, and the termination of proprietary rule in, the Caribee Islands in 1663 brought the greater part of the English West Indian empire under the direct administration of the Crown. As a corollary to this extension of Crown rule, the creation of effective institutions for the government of these and other colonies became a matter of urgent necessity. After a series of experiments in the decade following the Restoration, the constitution in 1672 of the Council of Trade and Plantations inaugurated 'a more thorough system of colonial control than had been established by any of its predecessors'. The sum effect of these developments was that London became, in a way that it had never been before, the place where all the major decisions affecting the destinies of the West Indies were taken. From London there issued not only Crown-appointed governors and a stream of Orders-in-Council, but also declarations of the King's pleasure on such minor questions as appointments to colonial judgeships and seats in colonial councils.1 To London there flowed, besides acts of colonial legislatures for approval or rejection, a torrent of complaints and petitions for redress.

Before coming to the substance of this paper, I feel that I must define its purpose somewhat more closely than I have done in the title which I have given to it. A study of the state and landed interests, of course, could embrace most of the domestic and much of the external histories of France and England in the thirteenth century, I shall be concerned with much less than that—with a problem which nevertheless seems to me to be of the first importance in any study of the social and economic policies (if that phrase be not too anachronistic) of medieval governments. I mean the break-up and alienation of feudal tenements in the thirteenth century, some of the causes and consequences thereof, and some of the attempts made to deal with the difficulties thereby occasioned. This still remains a large subject, and at best this paper is an attempt at synthesis, even of vulgarisation, which rests, in the main, upon the work of others. In particular, I have drawn heavily upon Professor Plucknett's study of the legislation of Edward I, and I was encouraged to venture upon some comparisons with France because he has also shown, I feel, that such comparisons may not be without value.

Some share—fluctuating and uncertain, but assuredly significant—of English foreign trade in modern times is to be credited to smugglers, who were ever busy in evading customs regulations and prohibitions. Mere administrative watchfulness and thoroughness could never do more than damp their activities; it was only the triumph of free trade in the early Victorian age that deprived them of their livelihood, and until then they were able to match by increase of cunning and of organization the ever more elaborate network of the customs system—its spies, its coastguards and its cutters as well as its routine officials at the ports. The smuggler flourished right down to the end of the period of protection, despite sporadic seizures by the revenue officers. In the first half of the nineteenth century, French wines, brandies and luxury textiles were being punctually shipped across the Channel in the teeth of prohibitions. In the other direction, we know, for instance, of the existence in the same period of so remarkable á phenomenon as the muslin manufacture of Tarare, near Lyons, which relied for its raw material upon the assured supply of English yarn owled abroad. But it was probably the eighteenth century, when customs regulations were at their most burdensome and complicated, that marked the classic epoch of illicit trade, the period in which the technical skill of both breakers and defenders of the law might earn the highest rewards.

With the accession of Richard II, the political plot thickens. Crisis follows crisis, and each time there is a spectacular state trial. At times there is an air of good humour, even indulgence, in the conduct of these affairs, but as the reign proceeds they become more grim, ending in such savagery as is rare in our political history. Modern historians have contributed much new material to the study of this reign, and yet the result is not an increase of clarity; the more we learn, the more obscure the whole story becomes. There seems an unmistakable likeness between the successive crises and their accompanying state trials, and yet it is hard to define it in terms of politics. They seem to be all of them variations—one might say Enigma Variations—upon an undisclosed theme which still eludes us.