Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/45

 12 S. II. JULY 8, 1916.J

NOTES AND QUERIES.

39

Crump, of 61 Iffley Road, and to Mrs. J. A. Swadling of Southcote, Reading, both of whom knew her intimately. The latter possesses one of her poems printed Sept. 16, 1875, by J. Oliver, 47 George Street, Oxford. The tree to which she dedicated one in 1847 is recorded in the following inscription, let into a brick wall at the top of " Hedington Way " :

Near this spot stood

the famous elm,

planted by the Rev. Josiah Pullen

about 1680 and known as

" Joe Pullen's Tree "

destroyed by fire on 13 October 1909.

The tenth of the Poems concerns the " beloved Pastor," of whom we read as follows, on a slab fixed into the east wall of St. Clement's Church :

To the Memory of the Rev. Nicholas James Moody, M.A.

formerly corresponding Secretary of the Church Missionary Society

at Madras, late Rector of this Parish,

in which

he so discharged his sacred duties as to gain the esteem and affection

both of rich and poor

and on which by his exertions

in the erection of the boys and infant

schools

he conferred permanent benefits this tablet has been raised

by penny subscription.

He fell asleep in Jesus

July v. MDCOCLVIII,

aged xxxvii. years.

W. James,

Treasurer.

These notes are a contribution to the bibliography of Oxford during the nineteenth century. EDWARD S. DODGSON.

Oxford.

on IBooha,

Calendar of Treasurj/ Book*. 16S1-1GS5, preserved in the Public Retard Office. Vol. VII. Parts I., II., III. Prepared by William A. Shaw. (Stationery Office : Part I., II. ; Part II., If. 2*. 6W. ; Part III., 13*.)

DR. SHAW, in his Introductions to these Treasury Books, is working at a re-interpretation of the methods of the English constitution in its pre- Revolutionary stage, and at a rehabilitation, financially speaking, of the character of Charles II. It is certainly worth while to consider, more narrowly than we have hitherto been easily able to do, the resources which Charles actually commanded, as distinguished on the one side from the uses to which he put them, and on the other from the merely nominal estimate of them, both of which have been, perhaps, over insisted upon. It is also worth while to get an accurate notion of the economic and financial position

in which the Commonwealth had left England a matter top often unduly subordinated to consideration of the political aggrandizement which followed on Cromwell's government and its dealings with the Continent. Without subscribing to it altogether for there remains a mass of material to be worked over, of a kind that is not fairly handled until it has become familiar, and has been looked at from several points of view we would recommend Dr. Shaw's Introduction to these volumes to the attention of students.

It comes out fairly clearly that if Charles waa not, according to modern ideas of the dutv of a king, scrupulous about national honour, neither on their side were his Parliaments, who, in addition, often displayed a curious ineptitude. The so to call it automatic recovery of a nation, when virtual cessation of war enables it to revert to the production and distribution of wealth, is well illustrated by the increase of revenue during the latter part of the reign. Charles's endeavours to meet his liabilities out of the moneys voted to him by Parliament endeavours which he persisted in with a loyalty not hitherto sufficiently recognized show the finer side of the Stuart or we should rather say the Tudor theory of kingship, just as his relation towards Louis XIV. shows its less agreeable, its more dangerous side. His view of himself was much that of a great landowner in the midst of his tenants. To him a neigh- bouring great landowner was nearer akin than the persons who dwelt on his estate ; and there was no shame in asking the help of such an equal, even if conditions unpalatable to the tenants should be the price of it. Dr. Shaw thinks the interval of the Commonwealth made a gap rather than an effective break or change in the Tudor tradition of kingship. It would probably be as true to say that the interval of the Restora- tion formed a gap in the newer tradition, the cause of this being in part a temporary failure to find adequate forms for the new popular conceptions of government, and to devise effective mooes of obtaining guarantees from the Executive.

The entries in the Treasury Books are full of interest ; but running, as these three parts do, to over 2,000 pages, they present a mass too huge for detailed review. Part III., besides a full General Index, includes seven Appendixes, of which the most important is Treasurer Southampton's Crown Lease Book for 1661.

The Fortnightly for July contains a poem by Mrs. Woods, which is one of the best ui>on the war that we have seen. It describes in verse of original and effective rhythm, and in a vision of real strength, the First Battle of Ypres the battle in which the Germans fell back before those " enormous Reserves of ours, invisible to our own men." Sir Herbert Warren's lecture to the Poetry Society can hardly be called a memorable performance; but, where it mentions recent verse upon the war, it makes some good suggestions for lovers of poetry. Mr. Edward Clodd has a rather frothy paper about the late Grant Allen, in which, however, are included some verses of Allen's commemorating a meeting of the Omar Khayyam Club just twenty years 8*0, and well worth having. Mrs. Aria is decidedly interest ing on the subject of ' Fashion and the Painter, though for our own part we think so heavily broidered a style and such strenuous posing make