Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/280

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272 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April kind, so that between the Public Record Office and the Archives of the University of Oxford four instances have now been noted. I feel that even in a review I may thank Mr. Poole for allowing me to see what Mr. Salter's careful description had caused me to suspect. Other muni- ment rooms must contain such seals ; one muniment room may contain an unbroken specimen x . If Mr. Salter could be put in commission, the mystery of the English half-seal might cease to be a mystery at all. But it must not be thought that these volumes only contain material of this kind. They are both rich in matter of more general interest. The second contains a roll of proceedings under the Statute of Labourers, a roll of great size and importance for which Miss Putnam has supplied a special introduction. It contains the best account of the Assize of Bread and Ale that I have met with, given by Mr. Salter as an introduction to rolls of the proceedings taken in Oxford against offenders in the fourteenth century. The introduction and the text are both rich in explanations of the technical terms of the baker's trade, and emphasize the point that the baker was only concerned with flour and not with the grain of which it was made. The proctor's accounts are of less general interest, but even among those there are gleanings to be had for the search. Corrigenda are too few to need mention. Mr. Salter may, however, like to know that the name of the clerk who was killed in 1298 was Fulk Neyrnuit. His family name occurs in the Testa de Nevill in a latinized form as Nigra Nox. C. G. CRUMP. The Queen's College. By JOHN RICHARD MAGRATH, D.D., Provost of Queen's. (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1921.) IT was a fortunate accident which prevented Dr. Magrath from completing the history of the college for the series published many years ago by Mr. F. E. Robinson. If it left that series incomplete, it has procured for us the more elaborate and detailed history which the provost has at last been able to produce of the college of which he has been for so many years the distinguished head. In his preface Dr t Magrath explains that he decided to take his original manuscript as the base of his new text and to supplement it freely by notes and appendixes. He apologizes for the possible incon- venience which this method may have caused. But few are likely to com- plain of the process which has given them two such richly documented volumes, full of material illustrative not only of the history of the college, with which they are primarily concerned, but of the whole university. The provost justly calls attention to the new material which he has collected on various points that have been before obscure ; to the details in the life of the founder and the history of the Eglesfield family ; to the true account of the dissension which led in 1379 to the expulsion of Provost Whitfield and three of the fellows, an incident which Antony Wood incorrectly surmised to be due to Wycliffism ; to the examination of John Wyclif's own connexion with the college, where he shows that some of the references are to a Poor Boy of the same name ; and to the new treatment of various 1 Two almost complete examples have now been found among the Duchy of Lancaster Royal Charters in the Public Record Office, nos. 248, 271.