WHEN I was honoured by the invitation to give these
lectures, I decided to choose a diplomatic subject.
Having spent much of my life in the practice and study
of diplomacy, I felt I might be able to illustrate the
theme by comparisons drawn from personal experience.
I also felt that the eponym of these lectures, while he
has received full credit as an ecclesiastic and a lawyer,
has not been sufficiently recognised as a diplomatist.
It is appropriate to recall that Archbishop Chichele
served as Ambassador to the Holy See and France,
that in 1409 he was head of the English delegation to
the Council of Pisa, and that seven years later he
negotiated an alliance between Sigismund, King of the
Romans, and Henry V. It is thus fitting that diplomacy
also should be celebrated as among the many accom-
plishments in which the archbishop excelled.

I have chosen as the general title for these four
lectures 'The evolution of diplomatic method'. The
word 'evolution' is not intended to suggest a con-
tinuous progression from the rudimentary to the
efficient: on the contrary, I hope to show that inter-

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