Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/473

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 465 partly turns on the interpretation of a deed ; can ' recipere ' in the phrase ' in manum suum recipere ' mean to receive ? The justices decided that it must, in this case at least, mean the recovery of possession. The remarks on the distinction between nonage in socage and in military tenure might have been strengthened by reference to the events of 1259. The treatment of wards in socage was one of the questions which moved the lesser gentry in that year. 1 On p. xxxviii the editors appear to miss the point of the pleading in Case 75 (Stoke v. Doyby). John of Stoke was not ' imprisoned for felony on the presentation by twelve jurors to the Justices in Eyre '. He was imprisoned, in the usual way, pending presentment, but escaped and was killed as a felon. Afterwards (postmodum) the factum predictum was presented before the justices (note from the Record, p. 26). The argument seems to turn on the point whether attainder after death could be pleaded as an exception in a subsequent action brought by the dead man's son. As Bereford C. J. remarked, ' By the breaking of the prison he immediately became a felon ' ; but apparently the exception, to be valid, must be that he was attainted by judgement. Yet could evidence of presentment by a jury, after the death of the accused, be accepted ? F. M. P. In his careful survey of The Age of the Reformation (London : Cape, 1922) Dr. Preserved Smith gives us proof that he has consulted the original documents on which his work is based. He also affords evidence that he has kept himself abreast of the results of recent research. In his biblio- graphy there is manifest a desire to read the last new monograph, though here and there we noted a few misprints. The author is good enough to comment on the more valuable of the works he uses, and this is a notable feature in his bibliography. We regret that though he gives us the date he never gives us the place of publication. The larger part of this volume covers well-trodden ground, but we are bound to add that it covers the ground diligently. The last five chapters deal with such matters as social conditions, the capitalistic revolution, main currents of thought, the temper of the times, and the interpretation of the Reformation. The last subject is analysed with both clearness and insight. R. H. M. As long ago as 1876, when the society published Bishop Fisher's English works, The Life of Fisher, transcribed from the Harleian MS. 6382 by the Rev. Ronald Bayne, and published by the Early English Text Society (London : Milford, 1921), was promised. It was intended to collate the text with other manuscripts of the Life, but the task has not been accomplished, owing, we understand, to the illness of Mr. Bayne which has culminated in his death and so in the loss of a well-known Elizabethan scholar. Since the volume was first projected, what must be for historians the standard edition of the Life of Fisher, incorporating both the English and Latin versions of it, has been published by Father van Ortroy, S.J., in the Analecta, Bollandiana in 1891 and 1893 (tomes x and xii), and separately in 1893. As Mr. Bayne's edition lacks any introduction, readers must 1 Foedera (Record Comm.), I. i. 381 ; Burton Annals in the Annaks Monastics (Rolls Series), i. 474, 482. VOL. xxxvn. NO. CXLVII. H h