and Flemish material, as well as almost all the available Scottish records, and have therefore been able to give a very full account of the history of the Staple. More might, however, have been said of the effect of Scotland's relations with England upon her trade in the seventeenth century, when commercial interests were becoming extremely important. The Navigation Act of 1651 was probably injurious to Scottish trade with Holland, but the prohibition of some of her chief exports, owing to her complete union with England, was even more detrimental. The disastrous effect of Charles II.'s Dutch Wars on Scottish trade is not mentioned. In this period, too, England, engaged in developing a strong protective system by successive Navigation Acts, viewed with jealousy her rival Holland's trade connection with the still commercially independent Scotland. The book has a full index and some interesting appendices giving the text of some of the contracts with Campvere, etc. There are also photographs of some picturesque buildings at Campvere, which were connected with the Scots Staple. IRELAND UNDER THE STEWARTS AND THEODORA KEITH. DURING THE INTERREGNUM. By Vol. I. 1603-1642, pp. xv, 370; Demy 8vo. London: Longmans, In these two volumes Mr. Bagwell continues his elaborate history of Ireland, of which three volumes, covering the ground from the Norse invasions, have already been published, while a third in the present set is here promised to carry the narrative to the Restoration. The scale of the work may thus be guessed at. It allows the author scope for that minute analysis of events-political, economic, and military-which is his most impressive accomplishment. He has consciously preferred this part, as he explains in his preface where he affirms the principle that 'the true function of history is to bring out the facts, and not to maintain a thesis.' And he is equally conscious of the probable result of this attitude: "No party will be pleased with the present work' in a land where party seems to colour every form of human activity. We must therefore take Mr. Bagwell on his own profession, and pronounce that he has given us a study distinguished throughout by a patient disentangling, and luminous and judicial presentation of a complicated series of events, such as, in a peculiar measure, suggest persistently that easy and attractive method of partisan treatment which he has made it his aim to avoid. For these are critical and determinative years-years of religious and dynastic struggles, of rebellions and massacres, of conquests and plantations, of Davis, Strafford, and Cromwell. At certain stages we should have felt grateful to Mr. Bagwell for a more general summing up of events, and an indication of the new problems which were likely to arise from the attempts to solve old ones. Some judgment would have been welcome on the political propriety and value of the plantation policy. We are shown clearly its failure in details, partly because it was at no time fully carried out on the lines laid down, but on the wider issue Mr. Bagwell leaves us to form our own conclusions. At least it made the Irish problem predominantly an agrarian one, where there already existed sufficient difficulties of another kind. And it is clear that in allotting the natives to reservations, excluding them from towns, and forbidding intermarriage with the settlers, seventeenth-century statesmanship in Ireland had not progressed an inch beyond that of the Plantagenets. Mr. Bagwell, however, is not quite so austere in his handling of personalities, and his method is perhaps seen at its best in the case of Strafford, the champion of a ruthless and routine efficiency, with not a little to recommend him as an administrator and not without more attractive traits of character, to which due consideration is given. Scottish readers will be interested in his high-handed and entirely illegal attempt to forestall any active sympathy with the Covenant among the Scots of Ulster. His imposition of the Black Oath, his proposal to deport the Scots, and his vicious utterances upon the Scottish rising, undoubtedly helped to prejudice in that country not only himself, but, by implication, the case of his royal master. To this influence upon the struggle it is possible our Scottish historians have not given sufficient weight. Then come the dramatic changes, when the loyalist settlers are the rebels and the disloyal Irish are joined with the royalists. On Cromwell's sophisticated harshness and his essential failure Mr. Bagwell might have been as precise as he is upon the failure of Strafford. Drogheda and its successors are not to be humanly, or even politically excused, by the plea that the massacres were not contrary to the laws of war, and Cromwell's own excuses are condemned by the facts. Other disputable matters, such as Tyrone's flight in 1607 and the Ulster massacre of 1641, are handled in an impartial, common-sense fashion; and even the case against Sir Phelim O'Neill is strongly countered for the defender, which is saying a good deal. Necessarily there is much painful reading, none the less so for the author's unimpassioned unrolling of a passion-driven record. Each volume is introduced by a map, and these significantly strike the dominant note of the period, for they represent phases of the plantations. Mr. Bagwell maintains throughout his judicial attitude and mode of utterance; his analysis of economic and military operations and of personages is always good; he has made use of much manuscript material; and his volumes will thoroughly recommend themselves to those whose suspicions might be aroused by a less equable and restrained treatise. And the parties' will at least find them serviceable in the interests of their respective theses. W. M. MACKENZIE. THE SCOTS PEERAGE. Edited by Sir James Balfour Paul, Lyon King of Arms. Vol. V. pp. vi, 639; Vol. VI. pp. vi. 601. Ry. 8vo. Edinburgh: David Douglas. 1908-9. 25s. nett each. OUR last notice of the Scottish Peerage appeared in October, 1907, and the literary output' of a volume a year having been steadily maintained, vols. v. and vi. are now before us, containing articles of no less than twenty-three different writers. With such variety of talent it will be quite safe to quote the first part of Martial's line, Sunt bona, sunt mediocria,' though we will not be unkind or unjust enough to apply the rest of the hexameter. Among the good ones we should certainly single out Ingram, Viscount Irvine, of which the title only and not the grantee has anything to do with the kingdom of Scotland, as anyone can tell who reads the first few lines. about the citizen and tallow chandler of London who married the daughter of the York haberdasher—a humble opening much more in the style of the cynical and sceptical G. E. C. than of the courtly and credulous Burke. This account in vol. v. seems to us just what it ought to be, being marked by precision and relevance: and the same remarks apply to 'Newhaven' in the next volume, which we had selected for an award of merit, not because we realised that it was by the same writer, but because we had observed that it contained what, alas, is too rarely found, the places where, as well as the dates when, events occurred. Even better, because dealing with matters more obscure and difficult, is the article on 'Oliphant' in vol. vi. by Mr. Maitland Thomson. The number of new facts and dates which have never before appeared in any history of the family is very noticeable, and is a great tribute to the energetic and successful research of the author. We believe that some Scotsman was found to say of himself, or some other base Saxon to say of him, that he joked wi' deeficulty, but we have come on an easy, delightful, and, we trust, intentional jest in Mr. William Macmath's work, vol. v. p. 116, where Viscount Kenmure expostulates with his Roman Catholic sisters and brother-in-law on their 'rotten religion,' and the reference given in the notes for this broadminded and charitable remark is to Heavenly Speeches, 17! We will now turn to the long article on the Douglas Earls of Morton, which is the joint work of Lyon and his able coadjutor the Rev. John Anderson; perhaps the most striking and revolutionary feature therein is the abolition of Dalkeith' as a peerage title, although it had not been assailed before either by G. Burnett or by G. E. C. Although we were a little startled to find poor Sir James Douglas, who had been one of the first persons dignified with the title of a Lord of Parliament, now called upon to take up the comparatively obscure position of a laird, yet we are bound to admit that there seems little or no evidence that a Barony of Dalkeith was ever created, or that it was anything more than a subsidiary and courtesy title of the heirs apparent of the Earls of Morton, and as is pointed out on p. 350 the supposed Lord is described in Royal charters before and after his death merely as 'James, Lord of Dalkeith, Knight.' All that can be said on the other side is that Robert the eighth (Douglas) Earl of Morton is called Lord Dalkeith in a charter dated 3 Nov., 1632, before his accession to the earldom, and on 9 Sept., 1672, his son William, Earl of Morton, formally by deed renounced his right to the style and designation of Lord Dalkeith, although the estate of that name had been alienated nearly thirty years before. By the way, to contemplate quite another subject, what cold-blooded scoundrels many of these grand old Scottish nobles were. Imagine the delicate sense of honour and family feeling of John Maxwell, Earl of Morton, who, when his uncle the Regent of Scotland was in trouble, made |