NOTE TO REVISED EDITION
THE revision of this book has, obviously, as its main
object to incorporate as much as is appropriate to a
work of this sort of the scholarly production of the last
seventeen years; and these additional years of teaching
the history of the English constitution should make for
wiser selection of material and emphasis. Also there has
been a quite complete rewriting. The main changes or
additions are-,these:
I Treating pre-Conquest Norman institutions as
coordinate with pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon institutions,
both being background and antecedent to English con-
stitutional history, which began in full measure in 1066.
This has been made the more feasible through Professor
Haskins's researches, which have given some body to our
knowledge of pre-Conquest Normandy. And in this
connection it has seemed best to include a sketch of con-
tinental feudalism.
2. The recent work of Professor Tout and others in
administrative history has made it possible to write a
new section on the organs of administration, and to
round out somewhat the treatment of the Council, bring-
ing this aspect of government into better proportion to
the law courts and Parliament. Also there is a fuller
appreciation of what a commanding force in English
history lay in the contending interests of England's pecu-
liar aristocracy and the king.
3. There has been an attempt throughout to give
due weight to the public or semi-public work of the