with a luminous tightly packed 'introductory sketch.' No single book has done so much to put the higher study of English mediaeval history on the sound basis of the study of original texts. 'Select Charters' was followed in 1873 by the first volume of the 'Constitutional History of England,' which covers the ground from the origins to the Great Charter. Next came in 1875 vol. ii;,
which went to 1399, and in 1878 vol. iii., which took the story down to 1485, and completed the work. It is by this massive work of historic synthesis that Stubbs's position among historians has generally been estimated, and not unjustly, if we recognise that the immense ground covered made pioneer work such as illuminated his contributions to the Rolls Series impossible, and that his limitation to the history of institutions gave few opportunities for the remarkable narrative and pictorial gifts there displayed. Rapidly as the book was executed, it shows extraordinary mastery of the mass of material which had to be dealt with. Stubbs evenly distributes his attention over the whole corpus of printed chronicles, printed charters, laws, rolls, and documents ; he has at his fingers' ends the monumental compilations of the great seventeenth-century scholars, and he uses to the full (perhaps too fully) the modern investigations of his German masters such as Maurer and Waitz. He moves easily under all this mass of learning and uses it with accuracy, precision, and insight. By the happy device of dividing his book into analytic and descriptive chapters alternating with annalistic narratives, he furnished the best skeleton of our mediæval political history that has been written, and gave width and human interest to his pages. Though necessarily dealing with great masses of detail, general principles are wisely and impressively emphasised ; though constantly concerned with abstractions and tendencies, it has rightly been pronounced to be ’marvellously concrete.' Self-suppression, impartiality, accuracy, sympathy, sobriety of judgment, and sense of proportion stand out in every part of the great book.
No work of erudition can altogether stand the test of time, but 'Stubbs's Constitutional History' still remains unsuperseded nearly forty years after its publication. It gave a new direction to the study of mediæval English history, and its influence for good is as lively now as when it first issued from the press. The austerity which sometimes repels the beginner has been mitigated by a whole literature of easy introductions to its doctrines, some good, more indifferent, none original, nearly all useful. By-ways which Stubbs was not able to explore have been pursued by critical disciples, among whom we may place Frederic William Maitland [q. v. Suppl. II], Mary Bateson [q. v. Suppl. II], Prof. Vinogradoff, and Dr. J. Horace Round. It is inevitable, under such circumstances, that many of Stubbs's conclusions have to be reviewed. This is especially the case since absorbing occupations and, perhaps, an increasingly conservative temper of mind prevented Stubbs from adequately revising what he had written. The 'Germanist' school of which he was the soberest and most reasonable exponent ia England is no longer in imiversal favour, and it is plain that large portions of the 'Constitutional History,' notably the Anglo-Saxon and Norman parts, will have, to some extent, to be re-written. Problems of 'origins' did not appeal to him, and he only moved easily when texts were abundant. As regards Anglo-Saxon history Stubbs confessed himself an 'agnostic' as compared with his friends Freeman and Green. Yet the passages in which his conclusions least meet the views of modern scholars are those in which he looked into the facts with the eyes of his German guides. In later parts of the book there is little to alter, though there is much to supplement. After the Norman reigns he seldom goes astray save when unconsciously influenced by general theories of tendency, or when dealing with subjects like the royal revenue in the fourteenth century, which could not be blocked out even in outline in the light of the printed materials then available. In 1907 the first volume of a French translation, 'Histoire constitutionnelle de l'Angleterre par W. Stubbs. Traduction de G. Lefebvre,' was published with notes and elucidations by Professor C. Petit-Dutaillis, wherein an effort was made to summarise the more generally accepted criticisms and amplifications of the early part of Stubbs's history. These criticisms have been translated by Mr. W. E. Rhodes in 1908 as 'Studies and Notes supplementary to Stubbs's "Constitutional History," down to the Great Charter.'
Stubbs never forgot that he was a clergyman. Pusey was his 'master,' and he was intimate with Liddon and the other high church leaders in Oxford, and strenuously supported their ecclesiastical and academic programme. In 1868 he
