In my third year of office I may, I hope, congratulate the Society on the satisfactory condition disclosed by the report which is in your hands.

The volume of ‘Transactions’ for the year 1902–3 contains some valuable papers based on original research and providing a varied entertainment for the historical reader. They show, as usual, a dominant interest in British history, a fact of which I do not complain; but I should be glad if the sphere of our activity were more frequently extended, so as to take in ancient and foreign history as well.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 put an end to the war which had troubled Europe for thirty years, and which had its origin in the bitter religious hatred, intensified by political jealousy, of the partisans of the Reformation on the one hand, and of the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church on the other.

In a letter to Hookham Frere, on January 8, 1825, Canning spoke of the recognition of Mexico and Colombia as 'an act which will make a change in the face of the world almost as great as that of the discovery of the continent now set free. The Allies will fret; but they will venture no serious remonstrance. France will fidget; but it will be with a view of hastening after our example. The Yankees will shout in triumph; but it is they who lose most by our decision.

On the range of Quarry hills, midway between Lympne and Aldington, overlooking the vast expanse of Romney Marsh, lies the little hamlet of Court-at-Street, and in the fields below, belonging to the manor farm, the considerable remains of the ancient chapel. It is as quiet and pastoral a spot as you will find in all England, yet the scene of an event which has made an indelible mark upon the history of our country.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the religious Orders held a strong position in England, with a fair prospect of extending their influence still further. Before the close, however, though outwardly the monasteries were more im-posing, internally there were already signs of decay. As the friars journeyed through England to execute the numerous Papal mandates, they had ample opportunities of observing the different houses of the religious, and their contemptuous remarks are therefore very suggestive. In their eyes the Cistercians were unlearned farmers, half laymen, and the Benedictines splendid epicures. Matthew Paris was stirred to wrath at the presumption of the friars in daring to criticise. He saw that the very causes which had altered the character of the other religious were at work among the friars themselves. Though scarcely forty years had passed since their founding, they were already occupied in amassing wealth and erecting stately buildings.

In the last volume of our Transactions is printed a paper by Mr. Leadam, which I had the privilege of hearing when it was read before the Society on May 15, 1902, on ‘An un-known Conspiracy against Henry VII.’ I had not at that time the opportunity of reading the documents on which it was founded, and the few remarks I was able to make upon the subject at the meeting were, I fear, not very edifying. One or two mysterious points are certainly involved in the evidences; but on examining the sources I confess it seems a little doubtful to me whether there was really any such conspiracy against Henry VII. as Mr. Leadam infers from them. The truth, however, if my view of it is correct, is not a little interesting, and very much in keeping with the dark doings of that troubled period.

The opinion has recently been expressed by a competent student of the sixteenth century that the inclosures of that period, both those which turned the old open fields into sheep farms, thereby evicting husbandmen from their holdings, and those which hedged in severalty the common pastures, were almost entirely responsible for the greater revolts which occurred under Tudor rule. Mr. Pollard specifies this cause of social discontent as mainly operative in the Pilgrimage of Grace, Wyatt's rebellion and that of 1569, as well as those of 1549, both east and west. Such a view ascribes, I think, an exaggerated importance to the inclosing movement of the time and fails to take due account of the combination of motives, political, religious, and social other than agrarian, which acted concurrently, though often at cross purposes, upon all classes, high and low, of a people which was passing reluctant and uncomprehending through an agitated era of transition. The thread of inclosure discontent, it is true, may be traced more or less plainly in these popular uprisings, but as only one of a tangled skein. Yet it is certainly a hasty generalisation, which, laying emphasis on this single element in a complex problem, declares that the masses who took part in all these cbellions were composed of ‘men who had been evicted from their tenements or who had been ground down to the verge of poverty by the loss of their rights to common—men who had nothing to hope from the existing social condition, and nothing to lose in case of failure.’

Although the history of the reign of Henry III. has often been written, I venture to think that some generalisations about it have been too readily accepted and that this is especially the case with respect to the king's minority. Too much importance has been attached to the monastic chronicles, and too little to the testimony of official records. In the first part of this paper I narrate briefly a few of the chief incidents of the regency of the earl Marshal with a view to showing what part the great men of the realm played in the war. I also endeavour to show the importance of the offices of castellan and sheriff, and to explain the government's policy with respect to them on the king's accession. In another part of this paper I hope to be allowed to deal with the difficulties concerning the surrender of the castles into the king's hands and those concerning the termination of the minority itself.