A State Health Service is not as new an institution as is generally supposed. It existed in the ancient world in Greek lands, and, perhaps in imitation, in the Roman West. While, of course, it cannot be said that the National Health Service of twentieth-century Britain was inspired by the practice of antiquity (which, indeed, was probably unknown to those who created it), the modern scheme constitutes a return to a view of the State which obtained in ancient times. The beneficent activity of the Church and then of privately supported hospitals mitigated the results of the disappearance of the ancient Welfare State. The evidence, scanty as it is, for the Health Service among the Greeks throws light on their attitude towards the proper function of the State as well as on their great appreciation of the skill and activity of the medical profession.

It is unfortunate for our understanding of the history of the tenth century that, for several critical periods for which the historian would most appreciate a full and reliable account of events, contemporary sources of information fail him at vital points. Until quite recently it was difficult to feel certain about the date of King Edward the Elder's death and the circumstances in which Aethelstan ascended the throne of England. The years between the death of King Eadred in 955 and the succession of Edgar to the reunited kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex in 959 are still obscure. Of the character of the reign of Edward the Martyr, ‘Little can be gathered…beyond a vague impression of disorder, and the knowledge that a period was abruptly set to the endowment of monasteries which Edgar had encouraged’. For this reign the historian's complaint is less of the dearth of evidence than that it is nearly all of the same kind.

It is a remarkable fact that the only continuous series of records which has survived from the twelfth century, the Great Rolls of the Pipe, was not completely available in print with adequate indexes until the thirties of the twentieth century. The search for an explanation takes one back to the beginnings of English medieval scholarship in the early seventeenth century. The great antiquaries of that day had not conceived the idea of printing adequately indexed editions of the records they used, for the medieval past, when books were patiently transcribed by hand for circulation, was too near. When scholars met to discuss their work it was of making copies by hand and passing them from one to another that they talked. They were concerned that the notes sent to them should be on ‘paper of the same size for bignesse as the sender first did use’. To them in the seventeenth century, the past was a virgin field in which they had no forerunners; and they themselves aimed at writing history which should stand for ever.

Many of the most important political changes of the nineteenth century have been studied exclusively from the standpoint of London. Clear-sighted contemporaries have been long aware of the consequent misrepresentation. ‘Londoners are the lapidaries of the nation’, wrote Holyoake, ‘they polish the diamond found in the counties, and sometimes if no one challenges them, they take credit for the jewel.’ Only too often no one has challenged them. The result has been not so much a failure to render credit where credit is due as a failure to understand the mainsprings of national political action. It is only when the local element has obtruded unmistakably, as in the story of Chartism, that it has been examined with care. Where it has not obtruded, historians have often been more willing to accept things as they seemed from the standpoint of the capital rather than to investigate them as they arose.

The following letters from Frederick William Maitland to Reginald Lane Poole are supplied (with the addition of explanatory notes) by Mr Austin Lane Poole, President of St John's College, Oxford, from the original manuscripts which he has since presented to the Cambridge University Library. They are printed in full, together with such of the replies from Reginald Lane Poole as are preserved amongst the Maitland Manuscripts in the same Library.

In an article written some five years ago, it was remarked that in no field of medieval studies has recent progress been so notable as in the history of thought. The advance has continued, and already several pages then written have been put out of date by writings that have been subsequently published, or at least made available in England. A few further notes, therefore, to supplement and correct the earlier article, may not be out of place.