I have pointed out in the introductory chapter my reasons for not going further than the reign of Edward I. The later history is rather a history of politics than of polity, and has to be illustrated by a very different sort of documents. A more consistent supplement or companion to this volume would be a comparative assortment of corresponding Origines of the other constitutions of Europe. This is a branch of study without which the student cannot fully realise either the peculiar characteristics of his own national polity, or the deep and wide basis which it has in common with those of the modern nations of the Continent. To have furnished however in this volume, even the bare texts of the chief constitutional monuments of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia, would have obliged me to alter the plan altogether; nor could the comparative Constitutional History of Europe be illustrated at all thoroughly on the same scale. For the present, I commend this little book to the good offices of teachers, and to the tender mercies of pupils, in the firm conviction that the subject it illustrates is of the first educational importance, and in the hope that the plan and line of study which it suggests will be found well calculated to draw out the mind, and to extend the area of sound teaching. OXFORD, October 7, 1870. In the Second Edition a few additions have been made to the Excerpts, and five or six documents of interest have been added, amongst which the Habeas Corpus Act and the Act of Settlement are the most important. An interesting charter of Canute will be found inserted at p. 75. OXFORD, January 14, 1874. Order for holding the Courts of the Hundred and the Shire Extracts from the Leges Henrici I Charter to the Citizens of London Record of a debate in the Council of the Nation Writ for enforcing Watch and Ward and the Assize of Arms Writ for carrying out the Watch and Ward and Assize of Arms Writ summoning two Knights of the Shire to grant an Aid |