Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/127

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 119 guided reforms of Raymund of Capua. He certainly shows that the latter was aft element in the struggle, but the struggle itself began some ten years before Raymund became master, and was directed against foreign influence. The quarrel centred round the control of promotions in the universities, from which Father Jarrett's treatment tends to separate it. The volume continues the history of the Dominicans in England to the present day. It contains a number of well-chosen illustrations, but the index is very inadequate. Apart from some expressions of opinion and implied judgements (' the cynicism of Fitz Ralph ', p. 149, is singularly inappropriate), it is written in a spirit of fair-mindedness and with an honest desire to find out and tell the truth. If in this review I have laid stress on errors and defects, I may refer in justification to Father Jarrett's oft- expressed opinion that the friars preachers flourish best in opposition. 1 A. G. LITTLE. Charles de France, Frere de Louis XI. Par HENRI STEIN. (Memoires et documents publics par la Societe de 1'FjCole des Chartes. Paris : Picard, 1921.) M. HENRI STEIN has made in this -work a contribution of the greatest value to the history of the fifteenth century. More than 800 pages are consecrated to the period 1446 to 1472, and much new light is thrown on the motives and rivalries underlying the continuous struggle between Louis XI and his younger brother, and on the characters and policies of the principal actors and their supporters. The book is a model for the historical researcher. It is based wholly upon original sources and very largely upon material still in manuscript. The smallest point is worked out with the greatest thoroughness and proved by the most minute investigation. No statement is made without verification, and no pains have been spared to make such verification exhaustive and conclusive. M. Stein in his introduction gives a short criticism of the contemporary chroniclers, showing in what respects their evidence is most likely to be reliable ; but it is not from the chroniclers that the greater part of his material has been gleaned. The Archives Nationales have furnished a considerable amount of new information, and this has been supplemented from departmental and municipal collections in every part of France with which the young prince had any sort of connexion, whilst material has also been gathered from unprinted records in Brussels, Munich, Vienna, and London. The actual text of the narrative, accompanied by copious notes, fills little over half the volume ; the remaining half contains valuable appendixes (two in especial, on the chancery and the money of Charles) and a number of pieces justificatives, which might be of great use to any historian of the period apart from the illustrations they furnish to the book itself. There are a number of accounts, published from originals in 1 I wish to acknowledge Father Jarrett's correction (p. 70) of a statement of mine in Grey Friars in Oxford, p. 73 : the question at issue between St. Thomas Aquinas and Pecham was the unity of forms, not the principium individudtionis. The latter was among the errors condemned at Paris, but not among those condemned at Oxford, in 1277.