An ultra-slow motion serial whose episodes appear at intervals of twelve months needs a recapitulation of the story so far, however excellent the retentive capacity of scholars in comparison with soap opera audiences. The characters in question are the landowners, great and not so great, and the landed families who were already wellestablished on their estates and in their country houses in late Victorian Britain: and also the newcomers who have continued, throughout the twentieth century, to purchase landed estates and country houses. The main plot concerns the structure and distribution of landownership, and I have suggested that reports of the virtual disappearance of great estates in the last hundred years have been greatly exaggerated. There have been great changes, but while some individuals or entire families have fallen off the boat others have clambered aboard, so that in the 1990s perhaps one-third or more of the land of Britain is held in sizeable estates of 1,000 acres and upwards, compared with radier over one-half in the 1890s. The changing composition of the cast of landowners, and the wildly fluctuating fortunes of particular members of the cast, have fascinated many observers of the social and political scene, and these features provide the sub-plots. The undoubted decline of landed and aristocratic political and social predominance, leading to the virtual elimination of their influence on public life, and the equally undoubted decline, impoverishment, and extinction of some once great and famous landed families, have tended to become confused as cause and effect in some accounts.

Those present in the council chamber around teatime on Friday, 4 April 1628 would have witnessed one of the more hopeful scenes in die politics of die late 1620s. Sir John Coke, Secretary of State, arrived hotfoot from die House of Commons to announce diat it had voted to grant die crown five subsidies. The king, who had been waiting for die news, expressed ‘joy and contentment, saying he was more happy than any of die kings his predecessors …’;

The ‘Warthegau’—officially the ‘Reichsgau Wartheland’, with its capital in Posen (Poznan)—was the largest of three areas of western Poland annexed to the German Reich after the defeat of Poland in 1939. In the genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ it plays a pivotal role. Some of the first major deportations of Jews took place from the Warthegau. The first big ghetto was established on the territory of the Warthegau, at Lodz (which the Nazis renamed Litzmannstadt). In autumn 1941, the first German Jews to be deported at the spearhead of the combing-out process of European Jewry were dispatched to die Warthegau. The possibility of liquidating ghettoised Jews had by then already been explicitly raised for the first time, in the summer of 1941, significantly by Nazi leaders in the Warthegau. The first mobile gassing units to be deployed against the Jews operated in the Warthegau in the closing months of 1941. And the systematic murder of the Jews began in early December 1941 in the first extermination camp—actually a ‘gas van station’—established at Chelmno on the Ner, in the Warthegau.

The British constitution is unwritten, but not unbuilt. The character of Britain's government buildings reflects the nature of its political system. This is particularly true with respect to the Houses of Parliament. They were almost entirely rebuilt after a fire, in 1834, which seriously damaged the House of Commons and adjacent buildings. The new Houses of Parliament were the most magnificent and expensive public buildings erected in Queen Victoria's reign. Their architectural evolution has been meticulously chronicled by a former Honorary Secretary of the Royal Historical Society, Professor Michael Port. But constitutionalists and historians have shewn little or no interest in the political character of the Victorian Houses of Parliament. Walter Bagehot, in his famous study, The English Constitution, published in 1867, made no reference to the newly completed Houses of Parliament. Likewise most modern books on Victorian political and constitutional history make no mention of die rebuilding.

The religion of Edward Sackville, fourth earl of Dorset, foxed his contemporaries, and he has proved an equally slippery customer for those modern historians who wish to see unbridgeable confessional gulfs opening up in the 1620s and 1630s. A detailed study of him reveals ambiguities of position that confused his contemporaries and confound modern categorisation. Those who knew Dorset differed dramatically in their perception of his religion. To one French ambassador, Tillières, he was ‘un puritain’; while to William Middleton, Lord Fielding's chaplain, he appeared ‘strong for Precisians’. By contrast, another French ambassador, Fontenay, believed that Dorset ‘n’est pas trop ennemy de nostre religion' and the papal agent Carlo Rossetti thought him ‘assai fautori nell’ intrinseco dei Cattolicci’. In 1641 Sir Walter Erle even opposed the re-enfranchisement of Seaford on the grounds that ‘the lord of the town [i.e. Dorset] [was] a papist'. Dorset was called everything from a puritan to a papist—and other things besides. In dedicating his ‘account of religion by reason’ to Dorset, Sir John Suckling wrote that the tract—which was widely condemned as Socinian—‘had like to make me an atheist at Court and your lordship no very good Christian’. Whereas Professor Hexter addressed ‘the problem of the Presbyterian-Independents’, contemporary images of Dorset present the even more bizarre spectacle of a puritan-papist-pagan. Where, that is, they mention his religion at all. For time and again we find that descriptions focus mainly on Dorset's courtly and chivalric qualities. Clarendon portrayed Dorset as ‘a man of an obliging nature, much honour, of great generosity, and of most entire fidelity to the Crown’; but made no mention of his religious attitudes. When authors dedicated their writings to Dorset they consistently highlighted these same secular traits: Sir Richard Baker praised his ‘publicke vertues’, Edward May his ‘noble nature’; and even John Bastwick called him simply ‘illustrissimus’.

The life of Robert I, king of Scots, written by John Barbour archdeacon of Aberdeen is the fullest of any medieval king in the west, a chronicle of chivalry in vernacular octosyllabic couplets, on which much of our understanding of the events and ethos of the Scottish war depends. In this paper I discuss some aspects of the king's reign which Barbour ignored: pro-Balliol sentiment which lingered in Scotland and at the French and papal courts; and also aspects of the war where Barbour's narrative is incomplete or misleading, but which illustrate the growth of King Robert's military effort from that of a very uncertain factional rising to one which matched the rhetorical claims (in die Declaration of Arbroath) of a people at war. I shall be treading ground already mapped in Professor Barrow's masterly study, seeking only to point out features to which Barbour has, by omission or commission, drawn my attention.

On 15 April 1483, the young Venetian noble Marino Sanudo set out on a tour of the stato di terra, the Republic's mainland state, with his cousin Marco and two other Venetian patricians. Marco and his colleagues were travelling in an official capacity as auditori nuovi and syndics of the Venetian government, dispatched to hear appeals from the Republic's subjects, and to investigate the conduct of resident officials. Marino had no such responsibilities, but he left an account of his experiences in the work known as the Itinerario con i Sindaci di Terrferma.

It is merely idle and frivolous, to conceive that any unperfect Union is desired, or can be granted: It is no more unperfect, as now it is projected, than a Child, that is born without a Beard. It is already a perfect Union in me, the Head … It is now perfect in my Title and Descent, though it be not accomplisht and full Union; for that Time hath all the Lineaments and Parts of a Body, yet is it but an Embrio, and no Child; and shall be born in his due Time; when it is born, though it then be a perfect Child, yet it is no Man; it must gather Strength and Perfection by Time; Even so is it in this case of Union. The Union is perfect in me; that is, it is a Union in my Blood and Title; yet but in embrione perfect. Upon the late Queen's Death, the Child was first brought to light; but to make it a perfect Man, to bring it to an accomplisht Union, it must have Time and Means; and if it be not at the first, blame not me; blame Time; blame the Order of Nature.

My concern in this paper is essentially the complementary commercial links of the two countries against the background of political friendship.

Eighty years ago Miss Shillington put forward a very positive picture of the strength of Anglo-Portuguese trade, and apart from some work by Professor Carus-Wilson and Dr Livermore, not much has been done on this trade since, although almost all other aspects of Portuguese activity in northern and Mediterranean markets and in exploration have been considered, and the relationship of northern trade in Portugal's seemingly dramatic expansion into colonial adventure has not infrequently been raised. Writers may passingly refer to Anglo-Portuguese trade as vigorous, regular, modest, increasing or decreasing: but on what scale? Is vigorous trade two, five, or ten ships a year in the context of Anglo-Portuguese trade? I first became interested in Portuguese trade years ago as I wrote on Castilian trade, when it seemed to me that, despite good political relations Anglo-Portuguese trade was modest, while the Basque and Castilian trade flourished in much less welcoming political circumstances. The approach of 1992 with its promised closer commercial links in the European community (now including Portugal) seems a good time to review England's medieval links with what is commonly called her oldest continuous ally and trading partner. What I intend to do in this paper is at once limited (to examine England's trade with Portugal and the Portuguese role in it) and very broad (to sweep a whole century to provide a context for this activity).

There is surprisingly little early medieval social history being written. In recent years, more specifically economic history has had a remarkable rebirth, thanks to the (largely unconnected) efforts of archaeologists on the one side and Belgian and German historians on the other; but the study of society in general, outside the restricted spheres of the aristocracy and the church, has been neglected. I speak schematically; obviously, there are notable exceptions. But it is significant that noone, in any country, has thought it worthwhile to attempt a synthesis of early medieval European socio-economic history as a whole that could replace those of Alfons Dopsch or, maybe, André Déléage. It would be hard; but people have tried it for the centuries after 900, with interesting (even if inevitably controversial) results. Why not earlier? Richard Sullivan recently lamented the conservatism of most Carolingian scholarship; in the arena of social history, he could easily have extended his complaints back to 500.