It has been my practice on former occasions, when I have had the honour of addressing you from this chair, to review briefly the noteworthy events of the past year, and to conclude with some general remarks on matters that seemed likely to be of interest to the Society. I may be allowed to follow the same plan to-day.

Writers of the thirteenth century observed the formation of a new power in the government. This they variously called ‘the king' familiar council’, ‘the supreme council’, ‘the secret council,’ ‘the noble and prudent council’. It later became known as ‘the continual’ or ‘the ordinary council’, and finally ‘the privy council’. These adjectives and others applied to the council and councillors serve very well to designate the body of which we speak. It is to be noted, however, that it is in chronicles and other literary sources that such terms are at first to be found. The stricter and more conservative ofKcial language recognised only the king's council, or simply the council Ambiguous as they are, these continued to be the usual terms for almost the whole of the middle age, though in the fourteenth century the more popular and descriptive terms found a place in the official records.

When Charles II. announced his impending marriage with Catharine of Portugal, the inclusion of Tangier in the Princess's dowry was the most popular clause of the marriage treaty.

English hopes ran even higher round the little African port than over the companion gift of Bombay, for Tangier, situated almost on the north-west point of Morocco, lay in the direct trade route from the Levant to Western Europe. The English Consul at Lisbon pointed out that it might from its position become a magazine for all the Levant, a port which would be used by the Spanish West India fleet homeward bound to Seville or Cadiz, in order to avoid the high duties imposed by the Crown of Spain in its own ports—valuable asset this in case of war with Holland, Spain, or France.

‘Nous devons dire ici,’ writes the editor of Réville's ‘Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs,’ ‘que nous n'avons pas pu … présenter à notre entière satisfaction les documents relatifs à cette révolte de Beverley, et nous souhaitons que quelque savant Anglais revoie les originaux et contrôle les conclusions.’ Without arrogating to himself the degree of erudition which these words imply, an English student might use this note as an excuse for further researches on this subject. Moreover, a fortunate discovery has placed the present writer in a position to supplement both M. Réville's researches and the valuable work which Mr. Leach has done in connection with the history of Beverley. The list of Ancient Petitions at the Record Office shows that the unusually large number of almost fifty consecutive documents appear to relate to Beverley, and after an examination of the documents themselves it was found that with a certain amount of rearrangement they could throw some light on the methods of medieval municipal politics.

In the present day we are often reminded that the farmhouse surrounded by hedged fields has not always formed a prominent feature of our English landscape.

At the close of the sixteenth century many fields now inclosed were still forest, fen, or rough waste land. Some formed portions of the so-called pastures where the village herds grazed in common, tended by the village herdsman, and others, again, were included in the great cornfields and meadows, known as the ‘common fields,’ which were often hundreds, and even thousands, of acres in extent.

There are two names which must be well known to anyone who has glanced at the margins of works on law and politics produced in Continental countries, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With St. Augustine quoted by writers like Althusius more than anyone else, with Innocent IV the ‘dominus canonistarum,’ the master of the Decretalists, a man never to be ignored in the history of thought, there stand out the great twin luminaries of Perugia, Bartolus and Baldus, his pupil, friend, and adversary. They are pre-eminent among the forgotten. Grotius and Gentilis and Bodin not merely quote Bartolus, but are what they are largely because of him. Pages might be filled with the epithets of laudation from time to time applied to him. He is the mirror and lamp of the law, his name is not so much that of a man as the very spirit of jurisprudence. Some say that he is the sole authority superior to the Roman Rota, while in Spain if there is a defect of law, the opinion of Bartolus is treated as itself decisive.

In the eastern part of the Duchy of Burgundy, in a region which now forms the southern portion of the Côte-d'Or Department, lies Cîteaux. The country around, after gently sloping from the hills on which Dijon stands, some four or five leagues to the north, here expands into a rolling plain formed by the basin of the Saône, and not far away southwards there is the junction of this river with its tributaries, the Doubs and the Denthe. The Côte-d'Or hills to the north-west protect it from some of the more violent storms, and under their shelter and through the congenial nature of the soil has grown up the great vine-growing industry of the district. Around Cîteaux in old days the country was wild, marshy, and a tangled mass of scrub, and even to-day the soil here is marshy, and there is an abundance of pools. The name itself shows the nature of the place: in its older form Cisteaux, or Cistercium, it seems to be derived either from Cisternæ, which Du Cange explains as ‘a marsh with stagnant pools’; or from Cistels, as the Bollandists give the form of the word; or Citeals, which is the form of the word preferred by Courtépée, with a variant Cisteauls. These last are explained as old French words meaning marsh rushes. Whichever be the correct derivation, the fact pointed to is the same; the word itself shows the swampy, unpromising nature of the country. But here was to spring up the mother-house of one of the greatest and most powerful of the religious orders of the Church, which some ot its adherents could claim to have been the mother of 10,000 dependent houses, 4,000 male, and 6,000 female, by the seventeenth century.

Under the later Anglo-Saxon kings the relations between England and Rome were not as good as in earlier times. Peter's pence were no longer sent from England according to custom. Canute's letter (cited in a previous paper)x bears witness to this negligence, which increased after his death. The laws regulating the payments were not enforced. The Papal Court only received gifts and offerings from England sent direct and voluntarily by private individuals. Occasionally Peter's pence were offered on the altars of the churches, but these went only into the bishop's treasury.

Two documents disclosing an incident in the life of the celebrated historian Polydore Vergil, which have hitherto escaped the research of biographers, are to be found in the Memoranda Roll of the King's Remembrancer of the Exchequer, Trinity term, 19 Henry VII., membrane xv and ibidem dorso (A.D. 1504). Of these the first refers to an illegal exchange negotiated on October 19, 1503, with a merchant of Florence; the second to an illegal exchange negotiated on March 8, 1504, with a merchant of Genoa. In both cases an information is laid against Polydore Vergil as defendant.

The summer of 1540 in England witnessed an event which proved a turning-point in the history of the country. The fall of Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex was the outcome of a long struggle between Gardiner and Cromwell, the two servants of Cardinal Wolsey who after their master's death led rival factions in the Council. As one result of the crisis a reconciliation with Rome was expected by foreign observers, a step that would have left the Emperor and the French King free to form independent alliances with England. At home those who dared not contemplate such a reconciliation could at least prevent the further spread of new doctrines by enforcing the doctrine of the Six Articles. But all who welcomed Cromwell's fall as the signal for a religious revolution were soon to realise that there was a king in England who would be head both of State and Church.

In the appendix printed at the end of Mr. Savine's paper on ‘Bondmen under the Tudors,’ where cases are given under counties, no instance is noticed in Surrey. I can at present supply two, and have little doubt that I shall come across more.

The following list of ships' names occurring in documents of the reign of James I. (March 24, 1603, to March 27, 1625), has been compiled mainly from the following sources:

High Court of Admiralty, Records.

State Papers Domestic, Ireland, Colonial, East Indies, America, Venice.

Historical MSS. Commission, Reports.

Customs Rolls.

Exchequer, Warrants for Issues, Issue Rolls, and K. R. Memoranda Rolls.

MSS. (various) British Museum.

Letter Book of the East India Company (Birdwood and Foster).

Letters received by the East India Company (Stevens).

Purchas, his Pilgrims.

Hakluyt Society, Publications.

Camden Society, Publications.