AND OTHER STUDIES BY J. H. ROUND M.A. AUTHOR OF ‘GEOFFREY DE MANDEVILLE’, ‘FEUDAL ENGLAND,’ ETC. With a Prefatory Letter by Sir Walter Besant WESTMINSTER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO. 2 WHITEHALL GARDENS 1899 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London....

DEAR MR. ROUND, I have to thank you for kindly letting me see the advance proofs of your new book. It is difficult for me to explain the very great advantage which the study of your books has been to me in my endeavour to get at the facts, especially those of the 12th century, connected with the history of London. For instance, I have found in your pages for the first time a working theory of the very difficult questions connected with the creation of the municipality. I have adopted your conclu

The paper which gives its title to this volume of unpublished studies deals with a subject of great interest, the origin of the City Corporation. In my previous work, ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville’ (1892), and especially in the Appendix it contains on ‘The early administration of London,’ I endeavoured to advance our knowledge of the government and the liberties of the City in the 12th century. In the present volume the paper entitled “London under Stephen” pursues the enquiry further. I have there ar

I would venture, at the outset, to describe this as a “pioneer” paper. It neither professes to determine questions nor attempts to exhaust a subject of singular complexity and obscurity. It is only an attempt to approach the problem on independent lines, and to indicate the path by which it may be possible to extend our knowledge in a department of research of which the importance and the interest are universally recognised. It is the fine saying of a brilliant scholar, I mean Professor Maitland

In my paper on “Regenbald, Priest and Chancellor,” [49] I was able to trace, by combining the evidence of Domesday and of charters, the history of a “priest” of Edward the Confessor, who became the “priest” of his successor also, and held of him rich possessions in churches and lands. Another churchman who flourished both before and after the Conquest, and must have enjoyed the favour both of the Confessor and of the Conqueror, was Ingelric, first dean of the house of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, whos

Having devoted special study to the art of war in the Norman period, including therein the subject of castles, I may have, perhaps, some claim to deal with the latest work on a topic which requires for its treatment special knowledge. When a treatise assumes a definite character, and is likely to be permanently consulted, it calls for closer criticism than a mere ephemeral production, and on this ground I would here discuss some points in Mr. Oman’s ‘History of the Art of War’ (1898). Mr. Oman i

Historians have rivalled one another in their witness to the extraordinary interest and importance of the twelfth-century Exchequer. “The whole framework of society,” writes the Bishop of Oxford, “may be said to have passed annually under its review.... The regular action of the central power of the kingdom becomes known to us first in the proceedings of the Exchequer.” Gneist insists on “its paramount importance” while “finance is the centre of all government”; and in her brilliant monograph on

The famous claim of the citizens of London at the death of Henry I., that the election of a king rested with themselves; [204] and the prominent part they actually took in placing Stephen on the throne, after making special terms with him, [205] impart peculiar interest to such glimpses as records afford us of the government, institutions, and leading citizens of London in Stephen’s days. Of these I have treated at some length in my work on Geoffrey de Mandeville, [206] but the information there

Several years ago there were discovered at the Public Record Office a number of parchment scraps relating to East Anglia, evidently belonging to some group, and of singularly early date. My friend, the late Mr. Walford Selby, showed them to me at the time, and asked me what I thought they were. As was announced at the time in the columns of the ‘Athenæum,’ [319] I pronounced them to be nothing less than fragments of original returns to the great ‘Inquest of Sheriffs’ in 1170. Dr. Stubbs, when ed

A brilliant but paradoxical writer—I refer to Mr. Standish O’Grady—has, with unerring hand, sketched for us the state of Ireland when as yet the Norman adventurer had not set foot upon her shores. [340] To those who dream of a golden age, of a land in the enjoyment of peace and happiness till invaded by the ruthless stranger, the scene his pen reveals should prove a rude awakening. That Mr. O’Grady writes with unrivalled knowledge of his subject, is neither his only nor his chief claim to the co

One of the hottest historical controversies that this generation has known has been waged around a certain document popularly but erroneously styled “the Bull Laudabiliter.” Duly found in the Roman Bullarium (1739) and in the Annals of Baronius, its authenticity had remained unshaken by sundry spasmodic attacks, and, some thirty years ago, it was virtually accepted as genuine by Roman Catholic and by Protestant historians alike. But since its learned examination and rejection by Dr. (since Cardi

The first coronation of an English king of which we possess a detailed account is that of Richard I. (3rd Sept., 1189). It was carried out, says Dr. Stubbs, “in such splendour and minute formality as to form a precedent for all subsequent ceremonies of the sort.” [421] As a more recent writer has observed: The order of the procession and the details of the ceremonial were arranged with unusual care and minuteness; it was the most splendid and elaborate coronation-ceremony that had ever been seen

It is the contention of Dr. Stubbs that William of Newburgh, in the first of these columns, describes the first, or spring “campaign,” and that Richard and the ‘Gesta’ describe, in the other two, the second “campaign” later in the year. The difficulty I always felt, in accepting this conclusion, is the almost incredible coincidence of the sequence of events here described occurring twice over, in exactly the same order. But one would not be justified in questioning a view confidently enunciated

And yet, as he reminded his hearers in one of his Oxford lectures, “Mediæval London still waits for its constitutional historian.” Occupying as it did, among English towns, a position apart, in wealth as in importance, London had a municipal development of her own, a development of which our best historians can only tell us that it is “obscure.” That obscurity, however, has been sadly increased by the careless study and the misapprehension of her great charters of liberties. Broadly speaking, an

It will be my object in this paper to recover and identify the fragments of a great national inquest, which seems to have escaped the notice of constitutional historians, and which, if its full returns had been preserved, might not unworthily be compared with the Domesday Inquest itself. In the course of doing so, I shall hope to prove that abstracts of these returns have been wrongly assigned by all antiquaries to an earlier and imaginary inquest, and that their belief has recently received an

I propose to deal in this chapter with two subjects which are wholly distinct, but which it has now been proposed, by a singular confusion, to connect. Speaking of certain miscellaneous returns in the ‘Red Book of the Exchequer,’ Mr. Hall writes: The first group in importance comprises the so-called Castle-guard Rents,’ lists of military services in connection with the Constableship of Dover Castle ... the Constableship of Windsor Castle, the Wardship of Bamburgh Castle, and the Cornage Rents of

As Sir Henry Howorth has so truly observed, in a presidential address to the members of the Archæological Institute, the transition from the chronicle to the record as a source of mediæval history is one of the most striking and hopeful features in recent historical research. And in no respect, perhaps, has the study of original records modified more profoundly the statements of mediæval chroniclers than in the matter of the figures they contain. Dealing with the introduction of knight-service i

In his valuable essay on a document of which the origin has long been discussed, the ‘Modus tenendi Parliamentum,’ [605] M. Bémont has drawn attention to the close association of this treatise, in the MSS. which contain it, with the coronation of Richard II. and with a treatise on the Marshal’s office. So close, indeed, is this association that Coke affirme avoir vu de ce traité [the Modus ] un exemplaire “écrit au temps de Henri II. qui contient la manière, la forme et l’usage de Gilbert de Scr

On page 21 I speak of Mr. Andrew Lang “tracing the occurrence in scattered counties of the same clan name to the existence of exogamy among our forefathers.” This view, which (as I there state) was adopted by Mr. Grant Allen, is set forth in his notes to Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ (Ed. Bolland, 1877), pp. 96, 99, 101. To show that I have in no way misrepresented that view, I append these extracts: the sibsceaft , or kinship, which, when settled within its own mark of land, is known in early Teutonic