THE volume that we present to the student public
completes the French edition of William Stubbs'
Constitutional History of England. Thirteen years have,
passed since the appearance of the preceding volume:
this delay is explained by the Great War, and later by
stress of work, caused in my collaborator's case by the
necessity of finishing an extremely important work of
his own; in mine, by increasingly heavy duties. We
have never, for a moment, thought of leaving our enter-
prise unfinished. The Constitutional History is still
to-day a fundamental book and will long remain so; and
never has the necessity of thoroughly understanding the
formation of political society in England appeared more
clearly than to-day.

The French reader will not, I think, be in any way
disappointed by the third volume. The English chroni-
cles of the XVth century are wretchedly meagre, a defect
which still remains insufficiently compensated by the
publication of parliamentary and administrative docu-
ments, of which indeed, Stubbs was familiar with only a
limited portion; nevertheless he has given a very interest-
ing narrative account of the Lancastrian and Yorkist
period. In accordance with his general plan, he devoted
the second part of his volume to institutions; but he has
often trespassed beyond his chronological limits, and no
one will complain of this. His study of the relations of
Church and State is the fruit of a peculiar competence in
these matters. The chapter on the Antiquities of Parlia-
ment is rich in information on elections, procedure, and

-305-