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434 REVIEWS OF BOOKS field of external authorities. Her last two chapters in this part deal with the relations of the court at York with the local courts and with the courts at Westminster. Here lay the seeds of that decline of the council to which she devotes part iv. It is obvious that it was the virtues rather than the sins of the council that brought about its downfall. A self-seeking and turbulent gentry, a band of lawyers jealous for the prerogatives of the common law and the revenues they derived from the courts in London, personal hostility to Straff ord, all went to bring about the attack on the council which was victorious in 1641. The constant petitions for the revival of the council and the attempts made to restore it in the days of the Commonwealth are sufficient proof that the statements of its enemies that it was guilty of oppression were, to say the least, exaggerated. It fell because it was a check on oppressive landowners and profiteering traders. Miss Reid has added valuable appendixes to her work. The first is a most excellent guide to authorities, both published and unpublished, and the others contain carefully prepared lists of the personnel of the council and certain hitherto unprinted documents. The whole is an outstanding contribution to historical scholarship. KENNETH H. VICKERS. Commons Debates for 1629. Edited by WALLACE NOTESTEIN and FRANCES HELEN BELF. (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota, 1921.) IN the introduction to this volume the editors have examined critically the sources for the proceedings of the house of commons for 1629, but their survey is so comprehensive as to glance backwards at the Elizabethan age and to look forward to the long parliament. The natural starting- point is the Commons' Journals, which are described here only briefly because another publication will contain a fuller discussion. The conclusion for 1629 is that the Journal is not the official record, which has vanished completely, but merely the hasty notes of the clerk made while the house was sitting. Then follows an examination of the True Relation, the different versions of which are shown to be based on at least two sets of news-letters issued, probably, from day to day, and on ' separates ', or speeches existing separately, these two sources being combined together in different order by different compilers or copyists. Next comes a most valuable account of the origin and character of ' separates ' and parliamentary news-letters, both of which are proved to have been written and circulated for profit by stationers or scriveners, sometimes from information supplied by members or their friends, sometimes from hints or rumours. The other sources enumerated refer more exclusively to this particular session and are of less general interest. The second part of the volume contains all the materials for the session of 1629 hitherto either unprinted or printed in an imperfect form. In editing the True Relation, forty-eight copies of which were discovered, the editors have tried to produce the best text after a most minute and thorough examination of the different versions, and to indicate variations of any importance. The result is a text far superior to that already available in the old Parliamentary History of 1753. The editors thought it