This first part is supplied with a threefold index. A few maps would greatly increase its value.
Professor Tout contributes the third of the volumes of the Political History of England. It goes without saying that the uniformly high standard of this series suffers nothing at the hands of Professor Tout. In some respects, in a freshness and newness of viewpoint, the volume has an advantage over its predecessors. For this, however, the author must share the credit with the peculiar opportunity offered by the field assigned him. This part of English history has been somewhat neglected by English historians of the last generation. To understand how much, one has only to recount the imposing monographs which have appeared upon the earlier or later periods and compare them with the somewhat meagre array of modern English authorities which the bibliography offers, especially for the part which precedes the reign of Edward III. If, however, English scholars have neglected this period, foreign scholars, particularly the French, have not. A vast array of continental sources has been made accessible, to say nothing of the many and valuable researches of French scholars that have given new importance to events which English writers have been in the habit of passing over altogether or leaving somewhat in the obscurity of background. Professor Tout has put the most of this material under tribute.
It is not possible, however, in the space allotted to this review to do more than note some of the more interesting modifications of accepted views. Thus the Pope appears as the real successor of William Marshal (p. 17). His policy is not to crush English liberty, but to prevent "Englishmen from flying at each other's throats" (p. 18). Something, moreover, is to be said even for Eleanor's uncles (pp. 54, 57). They were by no means such a bad lot as Matthew of Paris would have us believe. Again, in the troubles of the next reign Boniface was not unfriendly to Edward nor had he any idea of quarrelling with either Edward or Philip. No one was more surprised than he, apparently, that his unfortunate Clericis laicos should have raised such a disturbance (p. 200).
The author follows Bémont in finding a place for that disembodied ghost, the so-called Statutum de tallagio nan conccdendo (cf. p. 208 with Bémont, Chartes des Libertés Anglaises, pp. xliii, xliv, and 87). He also shows a masterly comprehension of Edward's policy (pp. 138
