Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/471

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 463 in question (ep. 96), but has dated it correctly in the year 986 as referring to the death not of Womar but of Womar's successor Wido. It has been usually said on the authority of Florence of Worcester that Heriman, the first bishop of Salisbury, was a native of Lorraine ; x but our author thinks he may have been, as William of Malmesbury distinctly states, of Flemish birth. His argument would have been strengthened if he had added the fact that the bishop in the course of his career withdrew to Flanders and entered the monastery of St. Bertin. His statement that Heriman moved the seat of his bishopric from Ramsbury to Salisbury in 1059 is incorrect ; what actually happened was that he was given in 1058 the see of Sherborne in addition to that of Ramsbury, which he had held since 1045, and in pursuance of a decision of a council held at London in 1075 moved the united sees to Salisbury. Apart from this ecclesiastical connexion a political and commercial intercourse rapidly developed during the eleventh century, and Flanders during the half-century preceding the Conquest became the regular resort of political exiles. The monograph deals with a subject upon which the evidence is often inconclusive and con- tradictory ; and if Dr. Toll has not succeeded in clearing away all doubts on intricate points, he has done valuable work in collecting together the avail- able material and in subjecting it to a critical examination. A. L. P. In his paper ' La Premiere fitape de la Formation Corporative. L'Entr'aide ' (extracted from the Bulletins de V Academic royale de Belgique, Brussels, 1921) M. G. des Marez, whose works on the history of industrial corporate life in the Low Countries are well known, deals with the preparatory period in the development of professional associations. The corporation, in the sense of an autonomous and privileged body, with economic, social, political, and juridical characteristics, was the result of a long process, completed in Flanders early in the fourteenth century, in Brabant nearly a hundred years later. The first step, which had been taken by the end of the twelfth century, was the formation under various influences of associations for mutual aid. These groups were formed naturally, with little or no help from outside. M. des Marez passes in review the ' f acteurs ou moments de la concentration corporative '. The commercial factor, for example, was the set of circumstances which led to the grouping of producers, engaged in the same trade, in the open market, or to the regulation of the halle ; industrial influences found expression in the common use of streams, fairs, mills ; at the call of war, fellow artisans marched together or shared the burdens imposed upon them ; they stood by each other in the law-courts, entered into obligations together, and learned to appoint delegates to appear for them ; they helped one another in time of need and formed religious confraternities. A group acting as a whole in one or more of these ways was not a " corporation ', but through these activities it took the first and a very important step towards definite corporation. M. des Marez, in a few pages, gives many apt examples of these varying forms of association. He writes with authority, and his paper, with the parts yet to come, will be of the greatest value to students of medieval city life. F. M. P. 1 So Freeman, Norman Conquest, ii. 600.