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Pollard: Etigland under tJic Protector So»icrset 553 England under the Protector Somerset. By A. F. Pollard. (Lon- don : Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibncr and Co. 1900. Pp. 362.) Just as the policy pursued by King John proved to be extremely favorable to the development of English constitutional liberties, so the influence of Mr. Froude has been useful in bringing about an accurate study and truthful representation of English history during the Tudor period. Mr. Froude's dogmatism, reckless use of authorities, and sub- jective interpretation of history roused so much opposition in the minds of other students that they were driven to subject all sources of informa- tion to a new and closer scrutiny and have reached results very different from his and from those of his predecessors. Mr. Pollard's essay ap- pears to be one of this group of works. It is true that it is a deliberate effort to rehabilitate the Protector, — to lift him from the somewhat contemptible position in which Mr. Froude had left him, and to relieve him of the load of odium with which certain other writers had burdened him. Yet to say that Mr. Pollard holds a brief for Somerset does not necessarily imply that he has not written a trustworthy account of his life and administration. On the contrary his search for materials has been exhaustive, as witness the admirable bibli- ographical appendix, and his use of these materials has been sufficiently critical. His picture of the condition of England at the death of Henry Vni. is made extremely sombre in order to bring out the difficulties con- fronting Somerset, and the policy of the Duke of Northumberland is nat- urally painted in equally dark colors in the process of describing it as a reaction from the moderation of the Protector's administration. But these are the setting of the work rather than its main subject. This is a careful study of the actions and policy of the Protector from the death of Henry VIII. to his own execution, under the four aspects of his methods of government, his religious changes, his foreign policy, and his opposi- tion to the agrarian changes in progress at the time. Under the first of these heads Mr. Pollard finds the key-note of the Protector's policy a de- sire to "lift the weight of absolutism which the Tudors had imposed on England," by sweeping away all the treason laws which then heavily en- cumbered the statute-book, by allowing freedom of speech in Parliament, and by increasing the importance of that body. He was "a believer in constitutional freedom." In the same way in religious affairs his administration w^as a period of moderation, and of such change only as was approved by Parliament and Convocation and probably not distasteful to the mass of the people. Most of the religious changes were projects formed and prepared long be- fore but withheld because of the reactionary or at least stationary attitude of Henry during his later years. The prelates who opposed the policy of the government in the debates in Parliament were not punished in any way, and there was not a single execution for any kind of religious opinion. Most of those instances of radical Protestant action and of re- ligious coercion usually cited as characteristic of the reign of Edward