Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/636

 628 SHORT NOTICES October being both connected with the fortunes of the Pilgrim migration, and the record of the case ' Morgan v. Malthus ', wherein, in the first year of James II, the notorious Sir Henry obtained 200 damages from the defendant for having described him as a pirate. (He had claimed 10,000 damages.) An abusive letter of Jonathan Kussell, one of the negotiators of the treaty of Ghent, directed against Great Britain, serves to explain the virulence with which he afterwards turned upon his fellow commissioner, John Quincy Adams (see Writings of John Quincy Adams, vol. vii, passim). H. E. E. Hard times compelled the suspension in 1915 of the Revue des Questions Historiques, of which we are sincerely glad to welcome the first number of the fiftieth volume (Paris : Plon, 1922), the original series having begun twenty-two years before this Eeview. A new proprietary association has been formed, including members of the family of the founder, the late Marquis de Beaucourt, but the character of the periodical remains the same. M. Jean Guiraud, who contributes the first part of a memorial notice of Monseigneur Duchesne, is still directeur, with M. Roger Lambelin as colleague, and in this number M. A. Moulle prints the second part of his article on ' Les Corporations Drapieres du Flandre au Moyen Age ', of which the first appeared in 1914. New materials are used by M. Gustave Gautherot in his article ' Bourmont a Waterloo ', and there are some useful shorter notes. We own, however, that our pleasure in reading the number was damped by the spirit which appears in one or two of the reviews and in the article of M. Marc de Germiny, ' Les Brigandages Mari times de 1'Angleterre au Debut de la Revolution '. This is not the place to controvert what M. de Germiny says, but we may be permitted to observe that his case is damaged by transparent overstatement. L. In Annales de Bretagne, tome xxxiv, no. 4 (Rennes : Plihon et Hommay ; Paris : Champion, 1921), M. Henri See writes an interesting study on ' Le Role de la Bourgeoisie Bretonne a la Veille de la Revolution '. He shows the large extent to which the middle classes of the towns educated public opinion in Brittany into sympathy with the reforms demanded by the Breton deputies in the States-General of 1789. They not only preached the revolutionary gospel to the sluggish country-side ; they forced the hands of the municipal authorities, largely under the control of an urban patriciate. He brings out clearly the difference between the attitude of Nantes, governed by an opulent commercial bourgeoisie, and that of Rennes, where middle-class opinion was mainly controlled by the lawyers practising in the parlement, and by the professional classes. In tome xxxiv, no. 4, and tome xxxv, no. 1, M. J. de la Martiniere publishes two interesting studies of the history of Vannes. In the former he prints the accounts rendered to the cathedral chapter during a vacancy in the episcopal see in 1476. One of these is the account of the promoteur of the episcopal chamber, that is substantially the ecclesiastical court of the diocese. The second is that of a scelleur whose official title is not given, but who dealt with acts concerning the spiritualty and the particular titles for clergy and ordination. The third is that of the scelleur of the court of the officiality,