The literature about the medieval state is enormous. Many very distinguished scholars, especially in Germany, have given their ripest thought to the problems which the word “state” suggests when it is applied to medieval society. In recent years several manful efforts have been made to extricate the subject from the trammels of law and philosophy. In Germany, for example, Georg von Below, Fritz Kern and, latest of all, Heinrich Mitteis, have, each in his own way, tried to deal with it as earlier writers, like Waitz, Ranke and Ficker, dealt with it. They have approached it from a political or social or economic point of view, and have made themselves independent, so far as they could, of the categories of the jurists and the generalisations suggested by a study of medieval political thought. Even these exceptional men have not found it easy to avoid categories of their own.

The title of this paper may raise false hopes in the minds of many; and it will be well to explain what has been attempted. English writers of the later twelfth century have on the whole been neglected; and when I was investigating the life and works of Alexander Nequam, it was necessary, in order to keep a sense of proportion, to try to learn something about the schools of the time, and to look at the work of some of his contemporaries. One or two things of interest have come to light, which I have tried to set out here. But the picture is far from complete. Nothing, for example, is said about legal studies.

The Muniments of Westminster Abbey form one of the largest and most important collections of medieval and later manuscripts in England in private or semi-private hands. No English Cathedral or Abbey Church has so complete a collection of documents dealing with its history and internal administration, and the fact that Westminster, apart from its London properties, had manors and estates all over England, and that the documents connected with these have been largely preserved, gives the collection an importance from various points of view which is only gradually becoming recognised by scholars and students.

The term secretanus was employed in England from the beginning of the thirteenth century in the varying meanings of a confidential clerk, an ambassador, or a member of the king's council. This undifferentiated use of the word had, however, practically ceased by the reign of Richard II, if not earlier, and from 1377 the secretanus regis is the holder of a definite office in the king's household, the king's confidential clerk a whose primary function is the custody of the king's signet.

Although Bologna was still the foremost studio in Italy, at least inthe study of law, Padua was by the mid-fifteenthcentury a strong rival, and foreign students were attractedthere and to Ferrara by the fame of Guarino da Verona. Indeed, the popularity of the studio of Ferrara was directlydue to the appointment of Guarino as the first Professor of Rhetoric there in 1436.

One of the most fascinating features in the study of the history of the common law as revealed in six centuries of law reports is the possibility of tracing the growth of legal thought over long periods of time; hints, suggestions, unsuccessful attempts to establish a rule or a doctrine often appear in such sources long before the innovation has received the final approbation of the courts, and so we are privileged to watch the progress of legal speculation, to overhear the debates upon new departures, and to estimate the forces which produced or obstructed some projected innovation. It is this possibility which gives such life and vividness to legal history. In many fields of thought we are mainly confined to those considered statements of results which have been deliberately left to us by philosophers, theologians, or politaical theorists, but the historian of the common law has more intimate and more human material at his disposal.

Gervase Holles, the Lincolnshire Antiquary (1607–75), was the representative of a junior branch of that family which acquired the Earldom of Clare from James I, produced the famous Denzil Holies, and in 1694 was elevated to the Dukedom of Newcastle. Gervase was a keen student of genealogy, heraldry, records and antiquities, and it was his ambition, inspired perhaps by the work of his friend, Sir William Dugdale, on Warwickshire, to produce an account “both historicall and genealogical” of his own native county.

A Parliament was inevitable from the moment James II was proclaimed King of England on 6 February, 1685. Two days later the new sovereign informed Barrillon, the French ambassador, of his intention to convene Lords and Commons in May. With a prudent regard for his relations with Louis XIV, he took care to explain that he embarked upon this course so speedily in order to show the English that he was not afraid, and to render more acceptable his intended proclamation directing the continued collection of revenues from customs and excise. He also indicated that an immediate summons was essential if he were to gain credit for such action.