THE PAPACY of Leo the Great gives us a good halting place in papal history; it closes one period and leaves another to begin. The Bishop of Imperial Rome could never be a mere ecclesiastical official of the greatest city; while it had been the home of Emperors he had been often enough a trusted adviser to them; when it ceased to be their dwelling-place fresh responsibilities and new opportunities came to him. There is hardly need even to mention the change due to the foundation of a new Rome in the East, with its fresh magnificence, so largely brought from the Western capital, and with its political outlook on the richest and most important provinces. Moreover the wealth of the Roman Church had long been great and it was matched by its Christian generosity; its influence in this way had passed into a tradition, which grew steadily from the time of St Ignatius onward. In all the cities where a church had been founded there was Christian organisation, and the Roman episcopate could not but profit by the business-like methods of the imperial and civic governments. Roman ecclesiastics were naturally distinguished for the same characteristics as were the civilians. The gravitas Romana could be noted even in the eleventh century, and its mere existence would have given peculiar weight to the decisions of Roman bishops and the decrees of Roman councils. Everywhere throughout the provinces local churches and local municipalities had almost alone stood the shock of the barbarian hordes; these inheritances from the past were naturally much greater in Rome itself than elsewhere, and owing to the turns of history advantage from them fell mainly to the papacy. And for the most part the papacy did not fail the Western world; it faced its dangers and its duties boldly.

Of all the institutions that grew up in the medieval church none has received so little attention from English scholars as the chantries. That they played an important part in the religious life of this country before the Reformation is indeed generally recognised; but our historians have done little more than to indicate the purposes for which chantries were founded, and to point out that their numbers increased greatly towards the end of the Middle Ages. In the present essay an attempt is made to render our knowledge of the chantries less vague by discussing at length some of the more important problems of their history, giving a detailed account of them during a single half century. For this purpose the reign of Edward III has been chosen, partly because its close is practically contemporaneous with our most important literary references to the chantries, those of Chaucer and Langland, but mainly because, since the Black Death occurred within a few years of the middle of this period, it affords an opportunity of studying the effects of the pestilence on this phase of English life.

Bankruptcy law in early nineteenth-century England called less loudly for reform than did the machinery of its courts. The “Commissioners in Bankruptcy,” spoken of in evidence before parliamentary committees as “London's main commercial court,” sat in a room in the Guildhall, always inadequate for their needs, but at times overrun by cooks when it was claimed as an extra kitchen for municipal feasts. There were seventy commissioners, grouped in fourteen lists of five. The post was in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, and as it was agreed that £300 a year was the most commissioners could expect to earn, it is not surprising that they were respectable rather than distinguished men, though in ambitious youth men as distinguished as Lord Macaulay might be glad of the Chancellor's patronage. The income, consisting of a guinea fee for each meeting, was brought to its maximum by expedients which destroyed the dignity and impaired the efficiency of the court. Of the five men, the necessary majority of three sat, while the other two went about other work, which might at times be that of practising as counsel before other “lists.” Guineas were easily added to by adjournments which increased the number of meetings. It was less obvious that they might be multiplied by three, by hearing before each set of three commissioners three bankruptcies, but this seems generally to have been done. Thus in a crowded room, at many tables, many bankruptcies marched on, at varying speeds, broken by frequent adjournment, which brought extra fee but at times better progress by resort to a private room in a coffee-house near by.

On 21 June, 1897, the German Ambassador at Rome, Herr von Bülow, found on his table in the Palazzo Caffarelli a telegram summoning him to Kiel. On his arrival there he was greeted on board the Hohenzollern by the Emperor William II with the words: “My dear Bernhard, I'm sorry for you and even more for the Contessina (for this is what the Empress Frederick and her children always called my wife) but you must go to the front. The Man from Baden has betrayed me.” In conversation William II proceeded to explain that Marschall von Bieberstein—the “Man from Baden”—had forfeited the Imperial confidence by intriguing with the Social Democrats and the Centre to introduce parliamentary government into Germany. In consequence, the Emperor added, he proposed to appoint Bülow Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in succession to Marschall von Bieberstein. Bülow was too clever to accept the proffered office at once and contented himself by pleading that, “until I had thoroughly informed myself about our international situation by studying the documents of the Foreign Office, I could not possibly give a definite answer as to whether I could conscientiously accept the post offered to me or not. Besides, I would have to collect my thoughts before I made the final decision, not through any kind of timidity, but because I felt my responsibility towards the country and the throne.”