One result of the war has been to turn our attention from domestic to foreign affairs. For a long time the British electorate had been so wrapped up in our own constitutional struggles that it was almost completely blind and deaf to other issues. It has been brought back to the affairs of Europe as it were by an earthquake. People who never thought seriously about the relations of England and the Continent, and were content to leave foreign policy to our Foreign Secretaries, begin to form opinions of their own, and will in due season express them at the poll. A new period of our history has begun in which a democracy, hitherto indifferent to external problems and exceptionally ignorant about them, will demand information about these problems, and cannot, without great peril to national interests, be left as uninformed as it is.

The constitutional form of the German Empire of two hundred years ago was that of to-day. A band of sovereign states; an emperor at their head, Roman in name but German in reality; a Reichstag, or diet of the empire; imperial courts of justice, Reichskammergericht and Reichshofrat, or Aulic Council; an army of general contribution. Really, nothing could be more different than the Germany of Charles VI from that of Bismarck's creation. The watchword of the latter is efficiency, the mark of the institutions of the old empire was their inefficiency. Rather it was the Germany of which Bismarck got rid, the Germany whose chief state still was Austria. That was changed in form, but little in essentials. To have a cipher emperor, or none, made little difference, and if nine-tenths of the 330 sovereign members of the old empire had been suppressed, its destinies were always in the hands of the few greater states. Now there is a real emperor, a real Reichstag, ordered administration of justice, a military system the most perfect in the world. In the eighteenth century the emperor, as such, was a figurehead, the diet a mockery, the law-courts utterly incompetent, the army, when it could be assembled, a shame and a disgrace. Soldiers there were in plenty, and of the best, but their masters preferred to earn money by hiring them out to foreign powers. There was no Zollverein to remove the shackles from internal trade and unify commercial interest. The imperial dignity was elective, not hereditary; foreign kings might aspire to it. But the main difference was the absence from the minds of all, saving a few philosophers, of any sense of German nationality or unity.

During the years immediately preceding the French Revolution Germany presented a curious spectacle of political decrepitude and intellectual rejuvenescence. The Holy Roman Empire, of which Voltaire caustically remarked that it was neither holy nor Roman nor an Empire, was afflicted with creeping paralysis. Its wheels continued to revolve; but the machinery was rusty and the output was small. ‘No Curtius,’ remarked Justus Möser, ‘leaps into the abyss for the preservation of the Imperial system.’ The prolonged duel between Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa destroyed whatever shadowy sentiment of unity had survived the wars of religion, and the short but stormy reign of Joseph II revealed to the world that the Imperial dignity had sunk into the tool and plaything of the house of Hapsburg. The Fürstenbund formally registered the emergence of a rival claimant for the hegemony of central Europe. But the springtime of Prussian greatness was merely the reflection of her ruler's dazzling personality. Mirabeau, who knew them both, described Frederick as all mind and his nephew all body. His death left Germany without a leader or a hero. Among the countless rulers who owed a nominal allegiance to the Emperor a few men of capacity and conscience, such as Ferdinand of Brunswick, Karl August of Weimar and Karl Friedrich of Baden, could be found; but the general level of character and intellect was low, and the scandals of courts and courtiers provoked disgust and indignation. The most docile people in Europe watched with impotent despair the orgies of the last Elector of Bavaria, the capricious tyranny of Karl Eugen of Württemberg, the insanity of Duke Karl of Zweibrücken, and the Byzantine decadence of the ecclesiastical Electors on the Rhine. On the eve of the Revolution the larger part of Germany was poor, ignorant, ill-governed and discontented.

To trace the influence of writings is a task in which full attainment is impossible. Yet the attempt is worth making, especially when the writer under consideration was in some sort a pioneer, the first to write a constitutional treatise in the English language, and likewise the first, in all probability, to write a legal treatise for the benefit of English laymen. Few English lawyers can have had so varied a career as that of Sir John Fortescue. Born some time between 1390 and 1400, he lived to see the ‘unquiet time’ of Henry IV, the ‘victorious acts’ of Henry V, and the ‘troublous season’ of Henry VI, which ended in the overthrow of the Lancastrian dynasty, and the apparently firm establishment of the Yorkist line. In early manhood he became a serjeant-at-law; in 1442 he was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench; in 1443 he was sent on various special commissions; in the critical year 1450 he acted as spokesman of the Judges in relation to the trial of Suffolk, and four years later he delivered the Judges' opinion on the important case of Thorpe. During the early stages of the Wars of the Roses Fortescue was actively engaged in various extra-judicial duties; in 1461 he was present at the battle of Towton, and a few months later he fought against Edward IV at Ryton and Brancepeth. Between 1461 and 1463 he wrote the ‘De Natura Legis Naturae’ and various tracts on the succession question, and in 1463 he accompanied Queen Margaret and her son into exile in Flanders and France, where he remained till 1471. During his sojourn abroad he wrote the ‘De Laudibus Legum Angliae,’ and drew up memoranda on the political situation and a programme for the restored Lancastrian government. Fortescue took a prominent part in the conclusion of the agreement between Margaret and Warwick in 1470, and accompanied the queen and her son to England, landing at Weymouth on the very day of Warwick's overthrow and death at Barnet. Less than a month later he was taken prisoner at Tewkesbury, and Prince Edward was slain; before long Henry VI also died, and there was nothing before the loyal Lancastrian but to accept the clemency of the conqueror, Edward IV. His pardon passed the Great Seal, he was made a member of the King's Council, and before very long he obtained (1473) the reversal of his attainder and the restoration of his estates at the price—hard for a lawyer to pay—of refuting in writing the arguments he had formerly adduced against Edward's title. An interesting reference to this treatise is made by Coke.

I propose to give an account of the sources available for the study of the Economic History of England in the Middle Ages. I shall confine myself entirely to the printed materials which have become accessible within recent years. The year 1900 is a convenient starting point, though I shall not make the dividing line too rigid. My purpose is mainly to call attention to the publications which have not been utilized by economic historians writing before the present century.

Mr. Joseph Bain took the following letter out of the mass of the Cely correspondence, when he was making the Calendar of the Documents in the Public Record Office relating to Scotland. It is in the Calendar, vol. iv., Appendix 31. The original is now in Chancery Miscellanea, 22, 6/42. Owing to its removal it was not edited with the other Cely Letters in Camden Third Series, vol. i. Mr. Bain misdated it, and was not aware to whom it was addressed. I can clear up both these points; and the letter is reprinted to make the commentary intelligible. I have had to make some very trifling alterations from Mr. Bain's copy. The letter has no subscription. Mr. Bain attributed it, no doubt rightly, to George Cely. The hand and style agree, and the writer had a brother Richard. It was meant for the hands of Sir John Weston, Prior of the Knights of St. John in England. He was always ‘My lord’ to the Celys, who had coats of his livery, and lived near him.

The Cottonian map, or ‘plat,’ Aug. I. i. 18, which forms the subject of this note, represents a descent on Brighton by a flotilla of French galleys, whose attack was covered by a squadron of men-of-war, represented as under sail or lying off the town.