Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/130

 1 20 Reviews of Books of wills in the municipal court. Chapter xviii. indicates that wills were proved in the church court when movables were bequeathed, and in the city court when lands were bequeathed. As wills of burgesses often disposed of both kinds of property, it was a common practice in Nor- wich and other boroughs to secure probate before both tribunals. The editor, on pages 153 and 296, evidently misapprehends the meaning of the term of forty days mentioned in the chapter of the custumal which de- scribes the action of fresh force. This term did not apply to the time within which the plea must be completed, but to the period following the act of intrusion or dispossession within which the action must be begun (see Fleta, bk. 11., ch. 55). In this connection attention may also be called to the misleading explanations of the essoin " de malo veniendi " and the writ "ex querela" on pages 151 and 291; the former is the essoin which Glanvill calls " de infirmitate veniendi ", and the latter is an early reference to the writ " ex gravi querela " to recover bequests of burgage tenements. Usually however the editor's notes are lucid and free from error. The introduction contains an excellent account of the history of municipal government in Norwich from the twelfth to the nineteenth century. Mr. Hudson fortunately has at his disposal data throwing light on the growth of the governing body of Norwich in the Middle Ages. He shows that during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the source of all authority in municipal affairs was a general assembly of the citizens, and that a marked oligarchical tendency is not clearly visible until early in the fifteenth century, when the mass of the commonality allowed the burden of government to rest on the shoulders of their -wealthier neighbors, who constituted the board of aldermen. The writers who contend that the government of English boroughs rested on an aristocratic basis throughout the Middle Ages will find it difficult to reconcile the development of Norwich with their theory. The Corporation of Norwich may well be proud of its ancient muni- ments and deserves much credit for having spared no expense in making them accessible to historians in a sumptuous and scholarly form befitting their value. Charles Gross. Innocent III. La Popaiitc ct VEmpirc. Par Achille Luch.mre, Membra de I'lnstitut. (Paris: Hachette et Cie. 1906. Pp. 306, 4-) M. LucHAiRE. who by his excellent works on the early Capetians had made their periods his own in a peculiar sense, has in the last few years pre-empted, though in a somewhat different way, the pontificate of Inno- cent III. His works on the Capetians, being supplied with the necessary apparatus, and critical notes, and cast in the form of manuals, were written for the student alone. His works on Innocent III., on the other hand, arc " popular " in the best sense of that mucli-abused word. In