Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/149

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 141 and the opponents of Henry VIII's ecclesiastical policy ', and James had to defend the church as well as the constitution of England inforo mundi, to answer the great challenge of the Society of Jesus, and to prove that his practice was in accordance with his principles. He had also to deal, in England and in Scotland, with the puritans, and Professor Mcllwain rightly insists that ' the root of his inveterate hatred of the puritans was really political not religious ', and that he held no theory of the divine origin of episcopacy. This is clear from a scrap of paper in his handwriting, preserved in the Bodleian Library, which has been printed only in a limited edition of some of the king's verse. What I speak against Puritans [he wrote] I mean it only by so many of my own subjects within my own dominions as are that way inclined, leaving all other reformed churches to their Christian liberty. Yea, I am so far from judging them in these points of difference between them and our church, the most whereof are merely adiafore, as I do think it a sjiecial point of our Christian liberty, which Christ left unto us, that every Christian king, free prince, or state may set down and establish such a form of exterior ecclesiastical policy in the church within their dominions, as shall best agree with the frame of their civil government and policy, always keeping fast the grounds of the faith and true Christian religion. Robert S. Rait. The Petition of Right. By F. H. Relf, Ph.D. (Minneapolis : Univer- sity of Minnesota Studies in the Social Sciences, no. 8, 1917.) At the university of Minnesota, under the very capable direction of Professor Wallace Notestein, an attempt is being made to re-edit the parliamentary debates of the reign of Charles I, and to publish some of the original reports of them. This study is one of the first-fruits of that effort. In her preface Miss Relf discusses the problem why so little has been written lately on the period of the early Stuarts. The reason, she concludes, 'is to be found in the prevalent feeling that Gardiner made the period of the early Stuarts peculiarly his own ; that he not only superseded all who had written before, but that for all time those who follow can only be gleaners in his field. Such a conception betrays a mis- understanding of the real intention of Gardiner's work. What he really did was to give ar general survey of what may be called, when we consider the great number of important events that are crowded into it, a long period. In most periods such a work has followed, and been based upon, particular studies. Gardiner had no such help ; he was practically a pioneer in the field. As such, the only way in which he could possibly cover the ground was by attempting nothing more than to tell what happened. Such a treatment ought to encourage rather than discourage further investiga- tion. It is but the starting-point for the student who wishes to find the why and wherefore of some particular problem.' This is a very true doctrine and a very seasonable one, but it does not seem to be accepted by English students, and the result is that recent monographs of value on the period in question have generally been the work of American students. Miss Relf's revision of the history of the Petition of Right was made possible by the discovery of fresh sources of information about the debates. Gardiner's authorities were imperfect.