Henry VII.'s Relations with Scotland and Ireland, 1485-1498 by Agnes Conway; Edmund CurtisReview by: Conyers ReadThe American Historical Review, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Oct., 1932), pp. 97-98Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1838074 .

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Conway: Henry VII, Scotland, and Ireland 97

discussion of the acquisition of citizenship and denization needs perhaps for greater clarity the addition of evidence from a later period. More satisfy- ing are the conclusions with regard to the access of aliens to the courts. With the partial exception of the Hansards they had in England no courts of their own, but the evidence given in this treatise shows that they had free access to the English courts of common law, a matter on which there has been some question. In the years under consideration sixty cases are cited from the rolls of the King's Bench in which aliens appear both as plaintiffs and defendants, and in a few of which both parties to the suit are aliens. In the hope of speed in settlement, however, and because aliens were under the king's protection, much of their litigation was carried on before the council or at the exchequer. The chapter on aliens before the council has appeared elsewhere, but its value is enhanced by being placed in its proper setting. The intricate procedure and0: slowness of the law, the inter- relations of courts, the use of a writ of subpjena are interestingly shown in the case cited of the attack of the mercers of London on the Lombard merchants in I357. The able tracking down of this long and involved case through some of its hitherto unknown ramifications is a good example of the results that can be attained by a careful comparative study of the records of various courts. The reader is led to hope that Miss Beardwood will con- tinue her researches into the later period, and that she will use especially the wealth of material so little touched which lies hidden in the rolls of the common law courts and other courts where aliens appeared.

Mt. Holyoke College. N. NEILSON.

BOOKS OF MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY

Henry VII.'s Relations with Scotland and Ireland, I485-I498. By AGNES CONWAY, M. A., Associate of Newnham College. With a Chapter on The Acts of the Poynings Parliament, 1494-1495, by EDMUND

CURTIS, M. A., Professor of Modern History, Trinity College, Dub- lin. (Cambridge: University Press; New York: Macmillan Com- pany. 1932. Pp. XXXi, 26o. $s.oo.) THE title of this book gives a fair indication of its contents. It contains

altogether only 143 pages of text, the balance consisting of illustrative docu- ments. So far as Scotland is concerned, it covers the period between the death of James III. and the marriage of his son, James IV., to Margaret Tudor. It contributes a few details to the tangled history of that tangled period, discusses the evidence relative to a Scottish contingent in Henry VII.'s army at Bosworth, discloses the fact that Henry was constantly in- triguing with rebellious factions in Scotland, and by calling attention to seriouis blunders in the dating of Scottish documents in Rymer's Foedera

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98 Reviews of Books

corrects prevalent misconceptions about the order of events in Anglo- Scottish relations during the first ten years of Henry's reign. But the sum total is not great and might have been got into a review article without crowding.

The more valuable parts of the book are those dealing with Irish af- fairs. Here the interest centers around the deputyship of Sir Edward Poynings and his successor, the eighth Earl of Kildaire. Its independent value is derived from a careful examination of the accounts of Henry's Irish fiscal agents, particularly those of William Hatcliffe. The relevant figures are printed at length in the appendixes. In this connection, the author has been at pains to prepare a complete bibliography of the extant account books of Henry's Treasurers of the Chamber, which Professor New- ton has taught us to regard as the basis for any adequate study of Henry VII.'s finances. The final chapter by Professor Curtis supplies a lucid ex- planation of the work of Poynings's parliament with supporting appendixes in which the acts of that parliament not printed in the Irish Statutes at Large (and only twenty-three out of forty-nine are printed there), are col- lected and set forth, many of them in extenso.

There can be no doubt that Miss Conway has done a useful piece of work, and particularly in her appended documents has made a definite con- tribution to the knowledge of her subject. The only serious blunder to be noted is in an appendix (xli) on Henry VII.'s council in which she has apparently confused K. C.'s with P. C.'s in her enumeration of 172 council- lors of the king. It is a pity that she has been so ready to accept and to act upon Bishop Stubbs's dictum that anything about Henry VII. is bound to be dull. Professor Fisher and after him Miss Temperley, to say nothing of Sir Francis Bacon, have made it abundantly clear that the good bishop was nodding at the time he spoke. But the stigma which he impressed remains; and Miss Conway, notwithstanding many entertaining interludes in the pursuit of her material, ranging all the way from swans nesting in a moat to uninspired motor thieves (preface, p. vii), has presented her find- ings in a form which goes far to justify it.

Philadelphia. CONYERS READ.

St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of his Times, I5I5-I595. By Louis PONNELLE and Louis BORDET. Translated by RALPH FRANCIS

KERR, of the London Oratory. (London: Sheed and Ward. 1932.

Pp. xxiv, 609. i6s.) THIS life of St. Philip has been brought to completion by two French

priests, neither of whom had any connection with the Oratory. The Abbe Ponnelle commenced the research and had written some five chapters when

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