Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/324

 316 SHORT NOTICES April When writing his interesting pamphlet entitled Loughborough during the Great Civil War (Loughborough : Echo Press, s.a.) Mr. E. W. Hensman seems to have found it necessary to eke out the history of the town with sketches of Leicestershire worthies and accounts of events not especially connected with his subject. As Loughborough was not of great importance in the civil war, it is a pity that Mr. Hensman did not change his design and deal with the county as a whole. If he pursues his researches he will do well to track down the Benett collection of Rupert papers. The majority of them were acquired by the British Museum ; some were purchased by the late Mr. Alfred Morrison ; x copies of others were presented to the Bodleian Library by Professor C. H. Firth ; and a few are printed in W. A. Day's Pythouse Papers (1879). He should also use more modern editions of his authorities. This would not only enable readers to find his references more easily, but would also supply him with much new information. Mr. Firth's edition of the Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson is a good example. Had Mr. Hensman used this edition instead of that of 1806, he would have found in the appendixes and foot-notes authorities mentioned which he did not use, and some valuable extracts from pamphlets, newspapers, &c. It is also probable that if he had a wider knowledge of the modern historical literature of the civil war he would not express his willingness to break a lance on behalf of the authenticity of the Squire papers, which historians have long since agreed to regard as spurious. G. D.

Since no adequate topographical history of Oxfordshire exists and since the sources are still largely in manuscript, the publication of the first part of the Parochial Collections made by Anthony a Wood and Richard Rawlinson by the Oxfordshire Record Society (Oxford, 1920) will supply a long-felt need. The purpose of both collectors was a parochial history of Oxfordshire, Anthony Wood being inspired by Dugdale's Warwickshire, Rawlinson aiming at a much larger scheme. Wood toured the county in 1656-7 and 1675-6 intent on monumental inscriptions and coats of arms ; in 1718 Rawlinson, the non-juring priest, travelling in a chaise in company with the bookseller Curll, came to inquire after crosses, feast days or wakes, fairs, patron saints, charities, schools, bells, sometimes church plate and even registers (see Brize Norton, where a ' Clark . . . being a Tayler cut 11 Leaves out of the Register for Measure '). Both give details of churches and other buildings and now and then a little historical information, too often inaccurate, as that on Clattercoats Priory (p. 98) or Coggs. Otherwise, the resultant surveys, made by well-informed and on the whole careful recorders (Wood especially), have always been an important but, owing to their chaotic character, irritating source for the historian of Oxfordshire. Their publication, which has been no light task, has been admirably accomplished by the editor of the series, the Rev. F. N. Davis. It is now possible to realize the losses of the last two hundred years, more especially in brasses and in glass, notably at Bampton, Bucknall, Beckley, Chipping Norton, and Coombe. Much 1 Hist. MSS. Comm., 9th Rep,, pt. ii, and the Catalogue of Mr. Morrison's Manu- scripts.