Twenty years have now elapsed since Professor G. B. Adams
published his Constitutional History of England, and many
more since the first appearance of the English manuals on this
subject by T. P. Taswell-Langmead and F. C. Montague. In the
intervening decades changes have taken place that seem to make
a new textbook in this field desirable for American students. In
addition to the progress of research and the corresponding de-
velopment of new points of view there have been major altera-
tions in the curricula of American educational institutions.
Courses in general European history, or even the history of
civilization, have commonly replaced those in English history at
the high-school and junior-college level. The student therefore
comes to the subject of English constitutional history with far
less of the particular background needed than his predecessors
used to have. On the other hand, the course is now frequently
included in a "new plan" law curriculum which distributes what
was formerly prelegal work throughout the entire program, and
thus demands of constitutional history a closer integration with
legal work than was hitherto necessary.

Because current curricula are crowded, this is a brief book.
Many topics generally deemed important have perforce been
treated in a few words or omitted altogether. If the expert reader
is shocked at finding cavalier pronouncements on questions which
for years have puzzled specialists, his painful sensations will be
as nothing to those of the author, who has been forced so often
to make use of the textbook writer's license. With what twinges
of conscience I have spoken on matters still sub judice, or on
which I ought to be better informed, the shades of earlier text-
book writers may bear witness. My only justification is that I

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