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270 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April of leases at ten years' purchase for clearing off debts amounting to more than £2,600. The vicissitudes through which Newcastle passed are illustrated by the career of Dr. Kobert Jennison, a ' pretious and painefull ' minister who is often mentioned in the Common Council Acts. The son of an alderman and mayor of Newcastle, he was suspended from his lectureship in 1639 on the ground of nonconformity : in accordance with the direction of Secretary Windebank he was replaced by Dr. George Wishart, who was to lecture on Sundays at All Hallows and on Thursdays at St. Nicholas. Dr. Jennison with his wife and children betook himself to Danzig, whence in 1645 he was recalled by the mayor and common council in accordance with an order of the house of commons. Meantime the vicar of All Hallows had been deprived for delinquency and Dr. Jennison was put in his place : one of the common council, in signing the order, adds, ' except against ye name of Vicar to bee giuen to him '. All Hallows vicarage was in a sorry plight ; it was ' quite ruinated by the Scotts so one after the taking of the Towne in the yeere 1644 ' and was utterly uninhabitable, ' beinge laid open in all parts of it from End to End and from the Ground to the Koofe '. Dr. Jennison, in addition to his duties at All Hallows, held a lectureship at St. Nicholas and the mastership of the hospital of St. Mary Magdalen ; till his death in 1653 he laboured at Newcastle, preaching twice or thrice a week, save when his infirmities called for the help of various other lecturers. It would seem that the presbyterians and the independents of Newcastle were far from living together in unity. In March 1656 the common council wrote despondingly that each man laboured rather to please himself and his party than to advance that which was for mutual and common good. In spite of an elaborate scheme for the joint use of the town churches by ministers of the two ' judgements ', discontents continued, and in November 1656 the mayor and aldermen wrote to Walter Strickland (one of the lord protector's council) complaining of the action of Mr. Cole (a presbyterian minister) in applying to his highness and parliament without their authority. Not only the ecclesiastical but also the economic and social life of Newcastle is amply illustrated by the Common Council Book. We find references to the coal trade, the glass manufacture, the hostmen and other trade companies, the grammar school, the town physician, and the London agents who were paid to look after the town's interests ; there is an order, too, to make clean the streets every Saturday night, a laudable practice which had fallen into disuse since the ' reducing ' of the town. Space has been wisely economized by the omission of unnecessary names, and an excellent index has been provided. Caroline A. J. Skeel. The History of the Post Office in British North America, 1639-1870. By W. Smith. (Cambridge : University Press, 1920.) It is not often that a public servant, after a busy official life, devotes his leisure to a history of the office with which he was connected ; and Mr. Smith is to be congratulated on the accomplishment of a very useful, as well as laborious, task. It is true that the post office was one only