The analyses of the individual Rolls of course yield the most instructive results. The amount of the chief sources of the revenue may be stated with a fair degree of accuracy. The lay subsidy, a fifteenth from counties, and a tenth from boroughs, remains at the amount established since the seventh year of Edward III.; £30,000 more or less; the evidence on this point is clear; the clerical tenth also remains at £20,000, in round numbers. The poll-tax of 1379 was stated in Parliament to have yielded only £22,000 (Rot. Parl.

This head includes a gratuity given to John of Gaunt for his "services" in Aquitain: the item ought perhaps to be ranked as a "gift." This head also includes an item of £1,193 75. 8d. paid to the Earl of March as King's lieutenant of Ireland: this, again, ought perhaps to be added to the military charge for

Ireland.

iii. 73); this amount probably represented only the lay contribution, being nearly the sum yielded by the lay portion of the first poll-tax under Edward III.

The increasing importance of the customs is the great feature of the revenue under Richard II. It will be seen that in the second financial year the total exceeds £52,000; in the twelfth year it exceeds £42,000; and in the twenty-first year The reduced amount in the £67,000. twelfth year may be ascribed to the naval war waged with France during that period; but the second year was not by any means a time of peace either. During these three periods the wool duties were practically at the same rates-viz., £2 10s. the sack of wool and 240 wool-fells, and £5 the "last" of leather from natives; from aliens the rates were £2 135. 4d. the sack, and 240 wool-fells, and £5 6s. 8d. the "last." During a part, but only a part, of the second year a surtax of 135. 4d. the sack and £1 6s. 8d. the last was current. Up to the twelfth year tonnage and poundage were levied at the rates of 25. the tun of wine and 6d. the pound avoirdupois of general groceries; in the twelfth year the rates were raised to 35. and 12d. respectively. The subsidy on cloth was a tax in the nature of an excise on each piece of cloth sold. The tax was farmed out, and the proceeds were inconsiderable.

The proceeds of the wool and leather duties give us the limits within which the amount of wool exported must be fixed. In the second year these proceeds amounted in round numbers to £48,000. If every penny of that came from wool, and that at the lower rate paid by native exporters, the total would not account for 20,000 sacks of wool, but we must allow something for the leather, and for the higher scale paid by foreign exporters. 15,000 or 16,000 sacks might therefore be a fair estimate of the amount of duty-paying wool exported in that year; in the twentyfirst year the amount might have risen to 20,000 sacks. How much more might have been smuggled it would be impossible to conjecture. Where the duty amounted to nearly, if not quite, £50 per cent. ad valorem the temptation to smuggle was very great.

With respect to the old feudal revenues of

the Crown, it is perhaps unfortunate that the twelfth and twenty-first years were selected for analysis, as in both those years the receipts were swelled by the vast forfeitures incurred in the first case by the persons condemned by well-known Appellants of 1388; and in the second case by the Appellants themselves, when they suffered in turn. Instead of £25,000, we might take £7,000 or £8,000 as a normal amount.

The reader will notice the large amount of arbitrary fines exacted in the twenty-first year; these were all imposed for supposed complicity in events exactly ten years old-namely, the rising of 1387-1388.

The Issue Rolls perhaps might furnish the 'most amusing details if we had space to devote to them.

It will be seen that even in a year of absolute peace and friendly foreign relations like the year 1397-1398, the military expenditure was not inconsiderable-£40,000; the whole of this was apparently spent on defensive strongholds, Calais alone absorbing £30,000. Viewed through the light of the earlier accounts, this last item excites surprise in 1378, we have £10,500 spent on Calais; in 1379, £20,300, with £5,000 more in February, 1380: (Issue Rolls, Mich. 1; Easter (No. 2); Mich. 2; Easter 2, and Mich. 3.) this was a time of active war, and the fortifications were being extended: in 1378-1379, when war was still in the ascendant, Calais demanded over £25,600. Why £30,000 should be spent in a time of profound peace does not appear. But the items in connection with Calais show numerous erasures and interlineations. Historically, however, the most interesting items are those of "Household" and "Pensions" in the twenty-first year. All through the reign Parliament had complained of the extravagance of the king's household; but up to the twelfth year, Richard had kept within the liberal limits of Edward III.: £17,000-£18,000; and in fact considerably within them, as Richard's "Household" includes his "Privy Purse." In Richard's twenty-first year, the year following Haxey's celebrated remonstrance in Parliament, the household expenditure rises to £45,coo, and "Pensions" to £23,000; while, under the latter head, £7,000 had sufficed for the largesses of Edward III. in his

forty-fourth year. These "Pensions" reveal a bit of the secret history of the reign which has not yet found a historian. Richard had conceived the idea of ruling England by a vast personal faction, paid out of the public purse, distinguished from their fellow subjects by his cognisance, the "White Hart," indulged in every license, and assured beforehand of judicial favour in every suit and action; all this on condition of always taking the king's side in every constitutional question. To Richard and his advisers the "White Hart" represented exactly what "Thorough" represented to Charles I. and Strafford an external view of the "Fellowship of the White Hart," is given in Langland's Poem on "Richard the Redeless," (Wright Pol. Poems, i. 363, and Skeats C.Text of Piers Plowman); its internal composition is revealed by our "Pensions." Every class is represented: barons, knights, archers, carpenters, plumbers, cooks, tailors, priests: the pensions vary from the £1,000 a year of the royal duke to the 6d. a day of the archer and the 4d. a day of the priest.

The household expenditure of the year is doubtless swelled by the expenses of the royal body guard, which gave such deep offence to the nation; deeper offence in fact than the "Fellowship of the White Hart." The king's liveried following was an extension of a system, illegal indeed and twice forbidden by statute during the reign, but still familiar on a smaller scale in the case of great noblemen; but the king's "Archer Guard" had probably no precedent since the days of Cnut and his "Housecarles."

The public works of the twenty-first year included extensions at the Tower and the raising of the walls of Westminster Hall. It has been suggested that, as Chaucer had an appointment as Clerk of Works at this time, he may have been employed on Westminster Hall. The Rolls give no support to this view. Chaucer's name never appears in connection with the weekly disbursements for "Works;" but he appears as drawing his pension, and occasionally applying for small sums in advance--5s. and 3s. 4d., and the like.

Richard was a man of artistic tastes. In his twenty-first year we find Thomas Prince, otherwise "Littlelyngton," estab

lished at Court as "Pictor Regis." It may be that we are indebted to his pencil for the interesting portrait of Richard which has been recently replaced in Westminster Abbey; but the portrait was probably taken in 1386 or 1387, when the King was eighteen or nineteen years old. I may state that the likeness entirely agrees with the descriptions given of Richard by the chroniclers as good-looking, florid, and effeminate.

In conclusion, I would ask, When is a further instalment of our unpublished records to be printed? Very fair justice has been done to our chroniclers in the Rolls series. The publication of documents of the same period seems to be at a standstill. We write about history and we talk about history, we conjecture and we infer, while the solid facts are all there, down beneath our feet, if only the mine were opened up and made available.

Reviews.

The History of the Rise and Progress of the Church and Parish of St. George-the-Martyr, Holborn. By J. LEWIS MILLER. (London: Bowden, Hudson & Co. 1881.) 8vo, pp. vii.−50.

T is a healthy sign of the increased interest in topographical studies when we find books published on special districts such as this. As Mr. Miller justly says of the subject of his brief history, "the great streams of traffic eddy around it, and, in spite of many changes, it is still in its quietude, and in the more salient features of its outward appearance pretty much what it was when first formed." The church, built in 1706, was originally a chapel of ease to St. Andrew's, but in 1713 the district was erected into a parish. The church was dedicated to St. George-the-Martyr, in compliment to Sir Streynsham Master, an eminent inhabitant of the district, who had been Governor of Fort St. George, in India. The most celebrated rector was the eminent antiquary, Dr. William Stukeley. The burial-ground was a part of Lamb's Conduit Fields, and is situated at the back of the Foundling Hospital. There are buried two persons widely separated in life--viz., Robert Nelson, the author of the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England, and Nancy Dawson, the hornpipe dancer of Covent Garden Theatre.

Queen Square has had some famous inhabitants, of whom Charles Churchill, the satirist; Jonathan Richardson, the portrait painter; and Robert Nelson were the most noted. Dr. Hickes, the Saxon scholar; Dr. Askew, the book collector; Dr. Mead; Lord Thurlow; and Zachary Macaulay all lived in Great Ormond Street. Red Lion Square must have looked very different from what it does now, when Hatton (1708) spoke of it as

"a pleasant square of good buildings." John Wilkes, Jonas Hanway, and Sharon Turner all lived in the square. The one hundred and seventy-three persons who once kept coaches in this parish have been replaced by a most remarkable congregation of educational and charitable institutions. Those who wish to know more of a distinctive district of old London should obtain this little book which will well repay perusal.

Coleman's Reprint of William Penn's Original Proposal and Plan for the Founding and Building of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, America, in 1683. (London: James Coleman, Tottenham. 1881.) Royal 8vo, pp. 24 and Plan.

Mr. Coleman has here reproduced Penn's Letter, dated from Philadelphia to the Committee of the Free Society of Traders of Pennsylvania, residing in London, which was printed and sold by Andrew Towle, at the Crooked Billet, in Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch. It contains a curious account of the natives of the province. There is a plan of the city special features, the natural productions and the of Philadelphia, showing the lots of the various purchasers; first there are the purchasers from 1,000 acres and upwards who are placed in the front and high streets; and then the lots of the purchasers under 1,000 acres, which are placed in the back streets. The opening of the letter, in which Penn alludes to himself, is of biographical interest.

"In the first place I take notice of the news you sent me, whereby I find some persons have had so little wit and so much malice as to report my death, and, to mend the matter, dead, a Jesuit too. One might have reasonably hoped that this distance, like death, would have been a protection against spite and envy; and indeed absence being a kind of death, ought alike to secure the name of the absent as the dead; because they are equally unable as such to defend themselves. But they that intend mischief, do not use to follow good rules to effect it. However, to the great sorrow and shame of the inventors I am still alive and no Jesuit, and I thank God very much : and without injustice to the authors of this, I may venture to infer that they that wilfully and falsely report would have been glad it had been so. But I perceive many frivolous and idle stories have been invented since my departure from England, which perhaps at this time are no more alive than I am dead."

Added to the letter is an address containing objections to a Tax Bill before the Assembly, 1692; particulars of surveys, 1720-30; and list of Philadelphians who signed the Declaration of Independence. This is a work of interest to all, but of very special interest to the present inhabitants of Pennsylvania.

Archeological and Historical Collections relating to the Counties of Ayr and Wigton. Vol. II. (Edinburgh Printed for the Ayr and Wigton Archæological Association. 1880.) 4to, pp. xix.-202.

This is one of those books about which it is difficult to write without appearing to be dealing in

measures 10 feet long, 2 feet 6 inches broad (inside), and I foot 9 inches deep. The bottom is flat and 4 inches thick, but its sides are thin and rise up abruptly. There are nine holes in its bottom arranged in two rows and about 15 inches apart, with the odd one at the apex. These holes are perfectly round and exactly I inch in diameter; and when the canoe was disinterred they were quite invisible, being all tightly plugged. A double-bladed oak paddle (Fig. 3), 4 feet 8 inches long, and 5 inches broad, was found

square, curiously carved on both sides. The side Fig. 3.

OAK PADDLE.

shown in Fig. 4, which is of the actual size, is the most elaborately carved. Besides these wooden objects, there were iron