Essex hay to the wharves and quays of London, just as they did the crops of William son of Simon in the time of King John' (i, 244-5).

These deeds are a quarry of information upon the trades, occupation and origin of Londoners in the Middle Ages, the variety of people who, outside the more specialised quarters, inhabited the London streets, and the rapidity with which houses changed hands or found new tenants. They throw light upon mediæval rents and will remind the scholar that much remains to be gathered from this kind of material to explain the evolution from the original burgage or ground rent, through the semi-feudal rent charges paid 'from the house,' to the rent paid for a house' occupied on a lease or annual tenancy. In the 13th century a piece of land might be burdened with definite charges which could not be paid unless the ground were occupied by a house of a certain value. As the house decayed, rents would fall into arrear; and a point was reached at which the landholder would find it convenient to make a fresh start. He would perhaps advance money to the tenant for building, or remit arrears of rent on condition that a new house were built and kept in repair. As more durable houses were built (stone houses are frequently mentioned), more modern issues arose, such as rights of drainage or the right to an uninterrupted view.

As the centuries pass, the record becomes both more detailed and of more general interest. Even Sir Norman Moore's skill cannot restore the daily life of London in the 13th and 14th centuries. The picture of the citizens seeking a municipal graveyard during the Interdict, or the status of London Bridge, with its chapel dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, acting as a legal person, give exceptional relief to the processions of bishops, mayors, citizens. But towards the end of the 15th century a more varied movement is discerned, even as the story becomes more specialised. The hospital accounts themselves show the influence of world affairs. Richard Grafton, grocer, printer, chronicler, and in 1551 deputy

*The earlier history of this intricate process has been examined by Mr M. de W. Hemmeon in his 'Burgage Tenure in Medieval England' (Cambridge, Mass., 1914).

treasurer of the hospital, reports a small benefit through the rise in the price of the angel, and a loss through the official juggling with base money. Fifty years or so later the hospital was able to invest money with the new East India Company, and, like so many of its benefactors, had an interest in enterprises beyond the sea. One such benefactor was Mr Benjamin Kenton.

'Benjamin Kenton, after whom a ward is also called, was a friend of Mr Treasurer Darker, and gave 50l. in 1770 and at his death 5000l. He had been a waiter at the Crown and Magpie tavern, and showed such civility and sagacity that, on a vacancy, a number of the customers bought him the tavern. He throve there, but owed his large fortune to a secret in relation to India. This was not some state affair, nor the knowledge of a dark transaction with a rajah or nawab or of some intrigue among the directors in Leadenhall Street-no, it was how to bottle beer so that on the long hot voyage round the Cape the cork might not fly out.'

And the hospital was invited to benefit by perverted as well as by fruitful ingenuity. For in 1774 Mr W. Gardiner of Richmond, a contemporary of Mr Kenton, and a Lisbon merchant interested in astronomy, offered 2000l. to St Bartholomew's, as a sacrifice for God's having put it in his power to overturn Sir Isaac Newton's system.'

To return to the Middle Ages. The name of Miss Ethel Mary Portal, the donor of the plates in this book, will be remembered with gratitude by all its readers, for she has enabled Sir Norman Moore to enrich his work by facsimiles of about forty documents, and in most cases of their seals. The diplomatic and palæographic interest of any large collection of documents is great, if the observer is quick to notice small points of contrast and slight deviations from the normal. For Sir Norman Moore these things have the fascination (as he confesses) which they had for Addison's noble friend, who came to prefer the searching of rolls and records to the reading of Virgil or Cicero. He gives numerous examples of the use of antique gems as seals, notes the introduction of armorial seals and the significance of private as distinct from official seals. Here he points out that a seal is attached to a vellum tag cut from a discarded

computus roll, and there that the original seal has been attached to a later copy of the original deed.* 'A remission and quit-claim of Thomas son of Walter Niger of Barking and his wife Beatrice to Cecilia of Sanford is interesting (says our author), because, though it ends with the words "testibus istis " and bears two seals on vellum tags, no witnesses' names are written, and the space for them remains blank.' The significance of this omission, it may be remarked, lies in the fact that the names of witnesses were frequently inserted without their knowledge or in their absence, a witness being a person prepared to give credit to the fact stated in the deed, not necessarily one who had seen it executed. In this particular case, it may perhaps be presumed that, as he was giving up something, Thomas son of Walter Niger was indifferent whether he had any witnesses or not. Perhaps he left this part of the transaction to Cecilia of Sanford.

Sir Norman Moore is equally interested in the writers of the documents, and has some delightful and suggestive pages on the clerks who attested last and sometimes state that they had written the deeds. William de Ripa, vicar of St Sepulchre, sometimes wrote the St Bartholomew deeds in the early part of Henry III's reign; and Alexander of Smithfield, a somewhat younger man, wrote a great many. Alexander wrote a beautiful simple hand; and his manuscripts may easily be recognised even if he does not describe himself as scriptor or write his name at all. The character of a handwriting depended not merely on the period but on the writer.' This was equally true of the professional copyists who worked side by side with the booksellers, bookbinders and parchment makers. Any one who turns over a number of mediæval books will notice the different methods of marking the 'quaterni' or gatherings. He may see indications of price and other marks which suggest that booksellers may have had their own methods of storing or identifying books. Certainly every copyist had his idiosyncrasies. John Cok, whose work we have already noticed, sometimes fell

i, 188-9. The same is probably true of the charter reproduced at p. 89. Thayer, 'A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law' (1898), pp. 97 foll. Mr.C. G. Crump has recently reminded students of this in History,' April 1919, vol. IV, p. 47.

into the way of copying the handwriting as well as the text of the manuscript before him.

As he writes of Alexander of Smithfield, and of the bookshop of Michael the clerk on Ludgate Hill adjoining the church of St Martin, the pride of the old Irish writers seems to stir in the blood of Sir Norman Moore. He remembers how Eugene O'Curry,' who might have been no more than a perfect transcriber of mediæval manuscripts, became learned in their contents.' 'It is right,' he continues, 'to think of all workers upon manuscripts and books as part of the world of letters.'

In our own day printers and photographers have helped Sir Norman Moore to prepare a beautiful book. He is not a perfect craftsman. He will summarise a document on one page and print it in full several pages later. He will explain some allusions at length and pass by others. He is inclined to play the wilful amateur, and write about the 'Earl of Mortaigne' or 'Moreton' instead of the simple and correct 'Count of Mortain.' He is sometimes a little too fanciful, forgetting that in the reconstruction of the past, fancy and imagination are poles asunder. But the specialist who is seriously annoyed by these defects will be a very arid specialist indeed. Rather he will envy the author his easy style and his apt and kindly learning. It is good to think how this active, busy, many-sided man, face to face each day with the tragic wastage of a great city, has found joy in studies so often despised and more frequently misunderstood. He has shown that the interest in the past of still living things can become a part of our daily duty towards them and can help us not to grow weary in doing it.

F. M. PoWICKE.

Art. 8.-HOME RULE AND LABOUR IN CATALONIA. WHEN the King of Spain entrusts a political leader with the task of forming a new Cabinet, he sometimes hands him an undated royal decree dissolving the Cortes. This document is of paramount importance in Spanish politics. To have or not to have el decreto makes all the difference between a long life or a brief one to a Ministry. The President of the Council can easily with that paper secure a majority in the Cortes; for he only needs to date it, publish it, and fix the time for a fresh general election. In such an election the Cabinet inevitably wins, for the Minister of the Interior makes the encasilladothat is to say, he distributes posts to the deputies in the interest of the Cabinet. In this work he is successfully helped in the provinces by that all-powerful personage (the equivalent in Spain of the American boss) called el cacique.* Excepting in the few cases in which the cacique himself is an opposition candidate and must be respected, the majority of votes in a constituency is generally, by some means or other, obtained by the Government.

During the late war only one general election took place-that of 1918. The Government made such a profusion of promises that a few had to be kept. It should be added that Señor Dato, whose Cabinet left power shortly before, had pretty well advanced the labour of the encasillado, naturally to his own advantage. The result was that the Government ran the risk-a rare occurrence in this country—of being defeated. Nevertheless, a small majority was secured by Señor Garcia Prieto, President of the Council; and Señor Dato obtained a fair representation of about 100 deputies.

Count Romanones, as Prime Minster in the late Government, controlled the votes of scarcely thirty deputies. Nevertheless it was his first task to get Parliament to approve the budget; for Spain, for several years, has had no budget voted by the Cortes, and the Government has had to depend, for meeting its financial obligations,

*Cacique is a word which the Spanish conquerors of the 16th century took from the Indians of Mexico and the Antilles. It means an Indian chief, lord of a small territory.