Historians of the crusades have given most of their attention to the major crusading expeditions, especially to the first, and to the surface history of the Latin states in Syria, especially to that of the kingdom of Jerusalem. They have shown less interest in those conditions in western Europe from which all crusading activity grew. It is true that the roots of the movement prior to the First Crusade were traced by Erdmann in a magisterial study which remains the most important contribution made to the subject during the present century. But the First Crusade was not the end of the matter. European sentiment about the crusades and the Latin states continued to develop during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and beyond. Even in the twelfth century there was a body of opinion which was highly critical of crusading activity and this grew in the course of time; but the main weight of conventional opinion in the later twelfth and earlier thirteenth century came to accept the crusade, and the maintenance or recovery of Latin possession of the Holy Places, as a Christian responsibility.

After the rising of 1745 the Highlands were rapidly tamed: within quite a short period the young men who in a past generation would have rallied to the support of their chiefs in domestic disputes, were gradually drawn off to fight in foreign wars, to settle in the colonies, or to help govern India. By the time of the great Sutherland clearances of 1807–20 the Highlands had been so far pacified that scarcely a hand was raised against the destruction of much-loved homes. Gradually the impression got abroad that the descendants of Rob Roy were gentle creatures, a bit rough perhaps in their habits, but easily domesticated and loyal to the powers that be in church and state. And this impression seemed to be confirmed by Queen Victoria's experiences at Balmoral, and by the friendly reception given to the wealthy tourists whom the works of Sir Walter Scott lured to the Highlands.

As the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge observed in his perceptive study of England and the Dutch Wars: ‘The wars themselves demonstrated not a few of the characteristics of modern warfare; there is a foretaste here of the bitter national feeling, the unscrupulous use of propaganda against the enemy, that were to become more familiar later. To some extent these weapons of war were deliberately manufactured and exploited by governments in the time of the Dutch wars, but equally certainly they were sometimes natural and spontaneous phenomena.’ Professor Charles Wilson confined his masterly analysis to the first two Anglo–Dutch wars. In this paper, I propose to consider the same points with reference to the third of these conflicts, and to trace in outline the major shifts and vagaries of public opinion on both sides of the North Sea.

In the late fourteenth century the kin' council in England came to have its own secretariat. The old ad hocarrangements for writing its documents were replaced by a paid ‘clerk of the council’ charged to write records of business done and preserving some sort of council archive; by the early fifteenth century it had become normal practice to record not only many decisions but the date and the names of those present at the time; and these arrangements continued unbroken through the fifteenth century and were considerably expanded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sometimes, and this is the exception rather than the rule, somedecisions were entered in books or journals, such as the ‘Book of the Council’ covering the years 1421 to 1435, but the normal method of recording decisions was in the form of endorsements on draft documents or petitions, sometimes in the form of memoranda. In 1500 many thousands of these documents must have existed on the files of chancery and the privy seal, particularly the privy seal, where they had been sent to authorize the issue of letters giving effect to council decisions. Since then, unfortunately, most have been destroyed or dispersed. Some, in general the more striking items, were taken from the files by Sir Robert Cotton, came to the British Museum, and were published by Sir Harris Nicolas in the 1830‘s. The others, the more numerous, are in the Public Record Office in various collections, and are almost entirely unpublished.

In the allegorical romance of Le Jouvencel, King Amydas complained to his son-in-law of the ‘slow poison in my stomach which will one day kill me.’ The romancer,—Jean de Bueil, admiral of France and count of Sancerre,—was referring to the presence of the English within France during the last phase of the Hundred Years War. Charles VII, with his habitual pessimism, was pictured in the Jouvencel taking counsel from his advisers on the best means of ridding his kingdom of the English. That object was achieved in fact as well as in romance between 1449 and 1453. A medal struck to commemorate the expulsion of the English carried the optimistic legend:

When I was made, everyone in France, without dispute, obeyed the prudent king, loved by God;—except at Calais which is a strong place.

Although the formation of our Society was not directly due to movements in the academic world, it did in fact take place shortly before a new epoch opened in English historiography. In 1868 the study of history as an academic discipline was non-existent in England save as part of a classical education. In that field those who seriously attempted to portray the ancient civilization were controlled by an austere literary tradition, and by the excellence and relatively small bulk of their sources. In addition to this, the work of the great Germans from Niebuhr to Mommsen penetrated to England long before Ranke and his seminar, or the early Monumentists, were known and imitated at Oxford and Cambridge. Consequently, the classical historians such as Thirlwall, Grote, Arnold and Finlay were far more sober, critical and quellenmässig than their contemporaries in English history. But they had no direct influence on historians in other fields or on academic practice, and they were all in a sense amateurs: Thirlwall was a bishop, Grote a banker, Finlay a man of private means and Arnold primarily a headmaster. In other fields of history the four principal names—and admittedly very great names—are of men who wrote either all or at least a principal part of their works as individuals at home and without academic position

Because of paradoxes which lie in the very nature of historical knowledge, our branch of scholarship was two centuries late in accomplishing the equivalent of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Only in the nineteenth century was it possible to establish, and to put into general practice, those techniques of discovery and verification which enable the student really to feel his feet. And only after this could the subject itself take the leap into that course of ever-accelerating development which the scientist had achieved at an earlier date. In the 1850's the young Acton was entranced by the tremendous awakening of the historical consciousness that had occurred in Germany. He was exultant because history had come to preside over so many branches of thought and activity. But the experience that really changed his outlook, and was to hold the prior place in his memory, was a later one—the result of that wider opening of the archives which took place in the region of the year 1860. This was the key that seemed to unlock the last drawer, making men feel that, now at last, they could really get down to the study of history. We may wonder whether anybody will ever again have quite the exhilaration of those who had the run of the newlyopened archives. A quick hunt through the papers would at least give them a story to tell, and they might hope soon to expose the things which governments or churches had managed to hide in days when significant secrets could be kept.