Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/322

 314 SHORT NOTICES April with him. Dr. J. Collingwood Bruce's Handbook to the Roman Wall first appeared (under a slightly different title) in 1863, and went through three editions in its author's lifetime. Later editions, revised and corrected in the light of recent discoveries, have been seen through the press by Mr. Robert Blair, who has now produced an eighth edition (London : Longmans, 1921). The work is indispensable to any one engaged in an archaeological ramble, and is admittedly the best concise account of the Roman Wall, although much of its information is out of date. Revision by simple addition is not altogether a satisfactory method, and due proportion is lost when, as in the present edition, we have no more than six pages on Corbridge while the thirty-eight pages on the camp and Roman bridge of Chesters are allowed to remain unaltered. Nor is the revision as thorough as could be wished. On p. 38 ' a year or two ago ' of the fifth (1907) edition becomes in the 1921 edition ' five or six years ago ', while on p. 51 a find described in 1907 as made ' recently ' is now stated to have occurred ' about six years ago '. H. H. E. C. A special interest attaches to the constitution of the towns whose government was found at the Reformation to be in the hands of a religious fraternity, as at Wisbech and at Stratford-on-Avon, where the property records and functions of the gilds of Holy Trinity and Holy Cross respec- tively were transferred to the municipalities chartered by Edward VI. In The Gild of St. Mary Lichfield edited by the late Dr. F. J. Furnivall (London : Early English Text Society, 1920) the few documents illustra- tive of a similar transition, hitherto printed only in a scarce local history, are made more accessible. The gild ordinances of 1387 are those of a purely religious and social fraternity and contain no suggestion of municipal functions. These appear for the first time in 1487, when the master of the gild, Sir Humfrey Stanley, and the worshipful his brethren ordain certain articles 'for the worship of the Citie, unite, pease and welfare of the Comiualte ', the transitional character of which deserves special study. By the first article ' the Master,. . . with the XL VIII shall steadfastly abide together ' as they have sworn '. . . to se good rule be kept and pease to be had '. By the second the master and his brothers are to hear disputes between the forty-eight, and if any of the parties will not abide the decision he is to be kept out of the worshipful election and fraternity of the said city and never to come amongst them to no ' Councell ' but be discharged as a man forsworn. The third article ordains fines and ultimate expulsion for non-attendance of the forty-eight when sum- moned by the master and his brethren. Articles 4 to 8 direct the con- stable to deal with frays, with nightwalkers, rioters, harlots, and scolds by imprisonment, cuckstool, and fine, ' the presentment to my Lord ' and ' the punishment of the Church ' being carefully reserved. Here alongside some of the distinctive terminology of the fifteenth-century municipal constitution we have features that recall the town communes of the twelfth century, if not the frith gilds of the tenth century. The account of Our Lady's Alms-chest, which had been endowed with 40 for loans to the poor and which was reformed by the visitation of the dean of Lichfield in the same year of reconstruction (1486), is interesting as revealing an