Page:The Review of English Studies Vol 1.djvu/126

112 two (XII. and XIII.) upon Art and Coinage, and finally a chapter (XIV.) on Trade and Commerce by the late Mr. Leadam. From an historical standpoint would it not have been advisable to group together at the beginning the chapters on organisation, social, economic, religious (Nos. VIII., IX., XIV. X.), as supplying the basis upon which the study of realien could rise? We should then be able to follow with greater case the development of the architecture of which Mr. Lamborn and Mr. Gotch have written, One does not see why Shipping should follow Heraldry; the mediæval navy being what it was, it seems more natural that the account of shipbuilding and the vessels used for war should follow the chapter on Trade. Question of order apart, it cannot be said that Chapters VII., VIIL., IX., and XIV. have been brought wholly up to date. Chancery Enrolments of the thirteenth century, Exchequer Accounts (K.R. “Army, Navy, and Ordnance”) of the fourteenth and fifteenth, have let in a great deal of information not utilised in the chapter on Shipping. The late Miss Toulmin Smith’s chapter remains stronger on the subject of Gilds and Crafts than on Town Government. Dr. James Tait’s Study of Municipal History in England (Proc. Brit. Acad., 1922, which might have found a mention in § 2 of the “Books for Reference”) has shown that such conclusions as that on p. 288, where the author adhered rather too strongly to the “garrison” theory of the burh, or on p. 290, where she inclined to Miss Bateson’s views on the Bretollian origin of a number of boroughs, need a little re-orientation. In this last connection Dr. Hemmeon’s important work, Burgage Tenure in Mediæval England, should have found a place even in a very summary and selective bibliography. In Chapter IX., § 3, on “Feudal Tenures,” we are given the ancient view of the “scattering” of estates at the Conquest; the doubtful statement that the “apparent restlessness” of the great barons and of the court (at what particular epoch?) is explained by the fact that both they and the king held manors in many different counties, and owing to the poverty of these had perpetually to be travelling from one to the other (p. 327); the remark (p. 328) that “in an age when fighting was thought to be the only profession for gentlemen (was this in the twelfth, the thirteenth, or the fourteenth century?), tenure by knight service was naturally reckoned more dignified and more aristocratic than tenure by free socage”—which seems to neglect the fact that, in the thirteenth century at any rate, many holders of knights’