This afternoon I invite you to follow me along a bypath which gives access to wide prospects. I have recently had occasion to investigate the history of Simon de Montfort's family after the battle of Evesham. I do not intend to-day to tell an old story, but to try to give to it, or rather to draw from it, the significance which it seems to possess.

When twenty years after the Crimean War the near eastern question again absorbed the attention of Europe, among the various changes in the setting of the crisis of 1876–8 as compared with that of 1853–6 appears conspicuously the new force styled panslavism. It is the purpose of this paper to attempt some analysis of its growth and its main elements with a view to indicating its position and potentialities on the eve of the crisis of 1876.

The Cinque Port tradition which inspires the civic pride of the Portsmen of this day has been built upon their former naval importance. We are accustomed to think of this group of towns, Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich, ringing the south-eastern coast of England, as sentinels of the channel, “the Gates,” as they liked to describe themselves, “that open and shutt to the perill or safety of this Kingdome.”

It is now generally admitted that of the two principal Jacobite risings, namely the Fifteen and the Forty-Five, the former, although it never came so near to success as the latter, was infinitely better conceived. Yet those who have not studied it in any detail cannot but be astonished at the alarm which it caused the Government of the day. Mar was a far more contemptible commander than Prince Charles Edward or Lord George Murray, while, on the other side, Argyll was greatly superior to the luckless Cope. As for the English Jacobites, the distinction between their behaviour in 1715 and 1745 seems to have been without a difference, for if a few of them did take up arms on the earlier occasion their intervention had no appreciable effect. In these circumstances it is only natural that the question should be asked what justification there is for the statement that the Fifteen was so much more dangerous to the new dynasty than the Forty-Five. The answer lies in the Jacobite activities in the South and West of England during the twelve months that followed the death of Anne, and, in view of their importance, it is surely no exaggeration to say that they have not hitherto received the attention which they deserve.

The popular (and perhaps not only the popular) impression of the Spanish Inquisition is that it was an organisation of blood and fire, concerned with the enforcement of Catholic uniformity at whatever cost. Of course, it maintained a “tribunal,” before which heretics and unbelievers were haled in order to be condemned to the stake. The outcome of the trial was however a foregone conclusion in every case. Hence the Inquisitional muniments (if they existed) could be of value only as a record of (to use the current jargon) sadism or obscurantism on the one side, and of Protestant endurance on the other. Even scholars such as Lea tended to be affected by the popular tradition: and one may scan those five superb volumes on the Inquisition in Spain and her dependencies in vain for any indication that its archives are of value for the study of human history and ideas.

The opening of the Council of Constance in November 1414 was an occasion full of promise and possibilities. The promise was more than dimmed, perhaps, by the attitude of John XXIII, who had taken three years to come to the point of summoning the council to which he had stood pledged at his election, but still it was an event at which all Christendom rejoiced.

The older and more experienced among the witnesses before the Select Committee of 1861 on the Diplomatic Service were generally agreed that the previous half-century had seen that service assume more and more the character of a profession. Among the reasons they advanced to explain this development were the growth of the service during that period —between 1816 and 1860 the total of heads of missions rose from 20 to 37 and the paid staff more than doubled in number—the greater part which it had of late appeared to play in world affairs, and its dissociation from the vicissitudes of domestic politics.