Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/600

 692 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October of a laborious task. His difficulties consisted mainly in selection from an enormous mass of material and in the incomplete nature of the records. It is rare to find a complete record of petitions, pleadings, and judgements ; and sometimes the interest of their contents has dictated the selection of cases in which the petitions alone have been discovered. The war, with its disturbance of communications across the Atlantic, added its quota to the editor's impediments, and Mr. Baldwin has had to rely to a considerable extent upon the kind offices of Mr. Charles Johnson for the correction of his proofs by comparison with the originals, and for other services. Nevertheless, the Selden Society has no cause to be ashamed of its latest contribution to legal and constitutional history. The volume is full of interest from many other points of view, and the cases illustrate social, economic, ecclesiastical, and local history as well as the law and the constitution. Perhaps the most generally important is the light which the case of The Bishop of Sahina v. Bedewijnde throws on the history of the problem of provisors before the passing of the famous statutes on the subject. But we have similar illustrations of the existence of a com- mon law principle of praemunire before it was given statutory authority, in much the same way as the law of treason was interpreted at common law long before Tudor parliaments enacted the interpretation. So, too, we trace in these cases the growing pressure on the council to hear suits against powerful offenders which ultimately produced the organization of the star chamber. Occasionally, of course, one could quarrel with the editors over a point of interpretation or of phraseology, such as the proleptic use of the phrase ' house of lords ' (p. ci), which does not occur in the text, or the identification (p. 91 n.) of ' the chamber adjoining the said exchequer ' with the star chamber. There was at least an ' exchequer chamber ', to which we find no reference in this volume, in which was exercised during the fifteenth century a jurisdiction very similar to that illustrated by some of these cases. Some of the notes on administrative matters will need supplementing from Professor Tout's recently-pubUshed studies on the subject, and there are occasional misprints like ' Pastor Letters ' and ' Myrick ' for ' Meyrick ' on p. 116, and * exoneration ' on p. cix. Englishmen will not like ' woolen ' (p. cxi) or ' endeavored ' (p. cxii), though they may be consoled by ' clamour ' on p. cxiii ; and Oxford men may object to the ' town of Oxford ' (p. 115 n.) and to the implication in the statement about Lionel Woodville (p. 116 n.) that ' Though a clergyman, he was much engaged in the material and sordid interests of the day. He was chancellor of the university of Oxford in 1479, bishop of Salisbury, 1482-4 ', &c. It may, too, be captious to criticize a volume of the Selden Society's publications on the ground that it illumines points of law rather than constitutional history ; and perhaps only a biased mind goes to these cases primarily for light on the gradual differentiation between the jurisdic- tion of the council and that of the council in parliament. ' Parliament ' is, of course, an epitome of ' the crown in council in parliament ', or, as Fleta has it, ' Habet enim rex curiam suam in consilio suo in parliamentis suis ' ; and it may be said that the cases are equally ' cases before the king's