Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/441

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 433 valuable contribution to historical knowledge, so valuable that one could Lave wished it produced on better paper and in better form. One can hardly believe that the frequent and in some cases absurd misprints are all the result of careless proof-reading, and must suspect that some explana- tion is to be found from the imprint of a foreign firm of printers at the end. Wherever lies the blame, the mistakes are so many as to be distinctly inconvenient to the reader. Miss Reid has elaborated a study of the council into a work on the council in its relation to the history of the ' North Parts ', and while, as she realizes, this has led to some repetition, it has both widened the interest of the whole work and increased the value of the material dealing with the council itself. The book is divided into four parts. The first deals with ' The Problem of the North ', and has much valuable information, gathered from a wealth of original sources, showing the need for and the genesis of a special council in the north. It is a very confused history, but Miss Reid makes it clear so far as the space at her disposal allows. She gives us so much, and her articles in this Review x show that she has looked so much further than she here goes, that we may hope for a more intensive study of border history from her pen. No one who has not ventured into this field can imagine the treacherous pitfalls that there await even the wary, and it could not be expected that Miss Reid should escape them all. For instance, her allusion to the struggle of Leonard Dacre to secure the inheritance of Sir James Strangways is one-sided and based on only one part of the evidence. Sir James did not bequeath his property by will, but conveyed the reversion of it by fine in his lifetime, the validity of which conveyance was contested after his death by his heiris, his cousin Robert Ross and his aunt Joan, wife of Sir William Mauleverer, on the ground that he had only a life-interest. Contrary to the statements in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Addenda, Elizabeth, upon which Mis,s Reid relies, a private act of parliament settling the dispute was passed, and a copy is to be found in the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII and, more accurately printed, in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, vol. vii. So far as my knowledge goes the division of the inheritance between the various claimants was based on sound justice. In the same connexion, proving the attempts of the Crown to weaken the territorial power of the border gentry, Miss Reid alludes to the surrender of his estates to the Crown by Sir Ralph Grey for a small rent. Though long negotiations on this subject took place, mainly caused by the insufficiency of Sir Ralph's provisions for the defence of his very important castle at Wark-on-Tweed, no such surrender took place, as the owner demanded an exchange of lands and refused to accept the Crown's suggestion of rent. These are quite minor points, but indicate some of the dangers of taking even state documents at their face value. Miss Reid's main contribution to knowledge in this work is contained in the other three parts. In part ii she gives a study of the growth and personnel of the council ; in part iii she goes into detail as to the organization, procedure, and jurisdiction of the court at York. This has entailed much laborious research, as the council's registers are entirely lost, and evidence has to be gathered from a wide 1 See ante, xxxii. 479; xxxv. 161. VOL. XXXVII. NO. CXLVII. F f