Presidential Address: Early English History, 1895–1920

Abstract

There is always an artificial character about the anniversary of a publication. However original a book or article may be, it never appears out of a void. If its subject is history, it is bound to reflect conclusions reached through previous research, and ideas which are the common property of scholars. It is in a sense the product of its time, and the moment of its appearance is an accident. But for all this, a series of publicationdates provides a rough index to the course of historical inquiry, and it becomes of more than bibliographical interest when it shows a number of independent but related lines of research brought to their conclusion within a single year. It is, no doubt, easy to exaggerate the significance of such dates, but the end of one set of investigations is commonly the beginning of another, and each of these fortunate years is in fact a cardinal point in the chronology of historical writing. By those whose interests lie in early English history it should certainly be reckoned a fortunate year which produced, exactly half a century ago, The Crawford Collection of early Charters and Documents edited by A. S. Napier and W. H. Stevenson, The History of English Law by F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, and Feudal England by J. H. Round.