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king began to use a new 'secret' seal for household business-a practice that grows clearer after 1311.

The barons, after 1297, in opposition to the king and the Wardrobe, which had become a supplementary office of state, strove for a long time in vain to restrain the growing abuse of the privy seal. They bore ill-will against this unpopular engine of oppressive prerogative, which interfered with the traditions of Exchequer and Chancery and even with the procedure of the courts of law. Upholding the Chancery rights against the Wardrobe, they succeeded in taking the privy seal from it and in entrusting it to a special keeper responsible to parliament. Henceforth the office of privy seal became a semi-independent branch of the household.* Still the keeper of the privy seal was a king's secretary. Baldock, who in 1323 rose from this post to the Chancellorship, retained his tight hold over privy seal and wardrobe and followed the unfortunate though not new-fangled plan of assimilating the offices and staffs of the great and privy seals, of subordinating the latter to the Chancery, and of establishing a centralised secretariat for all departments similar to la grande chancellerie royale. In England, however, bureaucracy, though it triumphed in the several departments, did not attain systematic unity of administration.

Prof. Tout's second volume covers the reigns of Edward I and II. Burnell and the two colleagues to whom King Henry's heir had entrusted his interests in 1270, became, without baronial nomination, the administrators of England during the years 1272-4; and Lord Edward's wardrobe was henceforth the king's. Like his father, distrustful of magnates, Edward preferred to govern through household officers, selecting all his famous ministers from the Wardrobe. The post of premier, first filled by Chancellor Burnell, was in Edward's last years held, for the first time in English history, by the Treasurer. In some of the careers of the civil servants, which Prof. Tout accurately investigates, often correcting the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' appears already a regular system of advancement; a king's clerk becomes in the wardrobe cofferer, controller, and keeper,

Its rolls, ordered to be written in 1326, no longer exist.

and is afterwards elevated to the Exchequer. Though rewarded with a bishopric, many a former adherent, like Bek, fell away from the king's side, joining the opposition against him and Edward II.

These ecclesiastics, occupied in all sorts of secular business, financial, administrative, diplomatic, and warlike, could hardly lead a religious life. But, though nearly 100,000l. passed through their hands every year, they remained free from the corruption for which the king had to punish high judges, and from the larceny committed in the king's own treasure by the monks of the royal abbey. They must have been hard workers indeed, considering the immense deal of business accomplished by only six or eight wardrobe clerks, who were only in time of pressure assisted by chancery clerks. Below the wardrobe controller stood the cofferer, entrusted with the details of book-keeping. The humblest posts were those of usher, who took 44d. a day in wages, and sub-usher; they arranged the journeys of the Wardrobe to Gascony, Wales, Flanders, and Scotland, as well as through England. Though the household ordinance of 1279, printed with many other valuable materials in this volume, does not betray any programmatic innovation, the Wardrobe under Edward I became embodied as a complete organisation, and attained the summit of political power. Each night the Wardrobe officers, together with the stewards, drew up the daily accounts of the household-and such 'daybooks' are still in existence-and annually the general accounts of the whole household. Nevertheless, we cannot help regarding as somewhat too sweeping, the remark of Prof. Tout, who is mostly so sparing in generalities, that 'the whole state and realm of England were the appurtenances of the king's household; the army was the household in arms; parliaments and councils were the household afforced to give the king advice . . . they had sprung from the household.'

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If possibly some household politician or juristic lawyer so far exaggerated the prerogative, the theory of which was growing while it was decaying in practice (as Stubbs says), there certainly was no lack of anti-royalists who would have fiercely opposed the courtier. We

readily believe, however, that all political progress issued from the brains of that small circle of loyal statesmen selected by the monarchy, which was later called the Privy Council. It had not yet executive power nor did it possess its own seal, though its advice was often realised by writs under privy seal. Its bureaucratic and clerical vein, well emphasised by Prof. Tout, seems to forbid our calling it merely feudal. In 1300 both Chancery and King's Bench were ordered to accompany the king—a reactionary measure proving, as Prof. Tout explains, the wish of the barons that the king should hear the advice of these state officers, which would be more palatable to the magnates, who claimed to be the crown's'natural' counsellors, than the vote of office clerks and courtiers. The royal ministers played indeed the leading part in the parliament of 1305; and the keeper of the privy seal, whom Prof. Tout shows to be identical with the secretary, began about this time to intervene as the king's most intimate adviser between the crown and the Chancellor.

The Wardrobe under Edward I constituted a second chancery as well as a second treasury. It served the financial administration, as a more elastic instrument, better than the older Exchequer in its stiffened traditions. Prof. Tout illustrates from copious sources the high amounts received and paid by the Wardrobe; they rose, almost, year by year, from 24,000l. to 125,000l. and left heavy yearly deficits of from 30,000l. to 40,000l. The creditors belonged to all classes of men, from the banks of the Ricardi or Frescobaldi to a humble cross-bowman. The credit operations thereby required, the borrowing from bankers, which the ecclesiastical prohibition of usury forbade to be funded into loans with interest, as well as the use of wardrobe debentures and exchequer tallies in the mode of later treasury bills, all deserve the careful attention of the specialist in the history of finance. The disorder of governmental economy in the last years of Edward I, and the disproportion of his magnificent plans to his limited means, are here illustrated by dry figures and by the fact that his wardrobe accounts were not finally audited till 1330.

It is only want of space that forbids us to accompany Prof. Tout through his last chapter on Edward II, by

excerpting, as we have hitherto done, in his own words so far as possible, his leading ideas and a few of the numberless facts newly displayed by him. If, however, these pages contribute to accelerate the due appreciation of an admirable work of devoted scholarship and ripe judgment, their purpose will be fulfilled.

The work of the well-known historian of the Tudors is sure to attract a wider circle of general readers than are likely to be interested in the investigation of obsolete administrative antiquities. Parliament being the very core of England's political life, and the British Parliament having become the model of innumerable assemblies all over the world, a book on its development, or rather its philosophical essence judged historically, if (as does the work before us) it teems with well-selected facts, original combinations, illuminating comparisons, suggestive problems, and new proposals to solve them, cannot but leave its mark upon all future views of the British constitution generally as well as on the political question how any nation can govern itself by means of elected representatives. Prof. Pollard's unprejudiced impartiality, wideness of view, and felicitous expression reflect honour on the memory of Maitland, whose researches in the origins of Parliament and of the constitution he has ably carried on. He enriches his story by reproducing original disquisitions, chiefly from the Rolls of Parliament of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. But he also surveys the last thousand years of British society, in its widest sense, including Church and State, from the point of view of an expositor of Parliament.

It is no mean praise for the institutional value of the House of Commons, that this keen observer should retain his firm belief in it. His chief argument for parliamentary government consists in the possibility of discussion between divergent interests. It is only by representation that democracy can govern an empire, and that a national state remains compatible with self-government. Self-government, opines its faithful adherent, made England readier to admit even the claims of other peoples. Opposed to hero-worship and bureaucracy, he declines on the other hand to accept the referendum, syndicalism, and guild-socialism, and

admonishes Labour not to forget its spiritual aims. Though disliking the mob and well aware how few persons are able to judge of political questions, and how every government requires professional experts, he is content to see the highest political sovereignty reposed in the electorate-an electorate involving universal suffrage and the general will of the people. Are we to supply 'behind it' after 'and'? Or does the author identify the nation's will with the vote? The masses vote under the party's whip. Is it not rather the party which sways the real sovereignty of democracy? Our guide remains silent about party as well as about the responsibility for the formation of public opinion of its prompter and mouthpiece, the Press, or of the social influences which pay it. And will His Majesty the People always administer the nation's capital, invisible goods included, in such a way that the children may enjoy their ancestors' inheritance?

Under the heading 'The British Realms in Parliament' the author proposes to change the moribund House of Lords into a representation of the different states of the imperial commonwealth, like the American senate. Without unity of race, language, tariff, law, and church the cohesion would be warranted only by the consent of the members. The judicial committee of the Privy Council ought, says our author, according to Lord Haldane's plan, to appear periodically in sessions throughout the British realms.

In contradistinction to the leading doctrine, shared by us, which derives the House of Lords from the advisory side of the Curia regis, i.e. the monarch's council of state, Prof. Pollard prefers to see its ancestor in a court of law, the Curia's judicial aspect. Maitland had indeed pointed out that a plea could be adjourned from King's Bench to Parliament; that judges formed the core of its membership; that in 1305, the earliest date at which we are informed of its proceedings, it was chiefly occupied with petitions; and that in compliance with such petitions it often set the courts of law into more rapid action. Our author adds as an argument that many parliamentary forms and expressions hail from law courts (just as do, we may remark, those of many a Teutonic institution, for instance, the gild), and

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