"Rotuli Parliamentorum." ¹ The value of their work is obvious,
but it is too early to estimate the extent to which it will modify
the views generally accepted since the appearance of Maitland's
edition of the Memoranda of the parliament of 1305.

The studies in this volume differ from their predecessors in one
respect: they have little relation to the chapters of Stubbs to
which they were added. The third volume of the Constitutional
History was devoted to the history of the fifteenth century, to
comprehensive studies in ecclesiastical and social history, and to
the antiquities of parliament. M. Petit-Dutaillis and M. Lefebvre
have confined themselves almost entirely to the development of
administration and parliamentary institutions in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. We do not think that their readers will
regret this departure from the plan of the earlier studies, for
it is most helpful to have, upon so complicated a series of pro-
blems, some of which will be the occasion of discussion and dis-
pute for many years to come, the impressions of scholars who are
experts in French history and can look at our English history without
any of our prepossessions. Even if we continue to differ -- and I
must confess that my own outlook upon English history is not the
same as that of M. Petit-Dutaillis -- we can learn much from them.
At the same time we cannot but wish that it had been possible to
include in this series a number of studies upon the aspects of our
history which Stubbs discussed in his last volume. Much has
been written, since he wrote, upon the relations between secular
and ecclesiastical authority, upon local government, the develop-
ment of municipal institutions, and the importance in constitu-
tional history of economic progress. However, the writings of
Maitland, Fueter, Workman, Tait, Unwin, Miss Putnam and
others are not hard of access; ² and we have every reason to be
thankful to M. Petit-Dutaillis and M. Lefebvre for what they
have given us.

OXFORD,
April, 1920.

F. M. POWICKE.

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