George Norman Clark

“ Between the conference at Cromford in September 1786 and the building of Oldknow's spinning mills at Stockport and Mellor four years were to elapse, two lean years followed by two years of prosperity. It was the large profits of the two latter years that supplied the means and seemed to furnish the justification for the magnificent schemes described in Owen's autobiography, but the pressure of competition in the lean years had already convinced Oldknow of the need for an increase of efficiency attainable only in the factory system. ”

“ Other entries are of exchanges; admissions of many kinds, such as that a man, his son, and sequela, are free and not in villeinage, or of rights of common, or of verbal grants; perambulations, boundary agreements, acquittance of suit by the earl, grants of custody of heirs' inheritances and such like; in fact, the entries in the 'Domesday' Roll illustrate many phases of the daily medieval life when few could read and write and the publicity and permanence now provided by the evidence of press and book did not exist as means of record. ”

“ In passing to an account of Oldknow's relations with the spinner a few words on technical matters are unavoidable. The coarser and finer varieties of cotton yarn are distinguished as low and high counts respectively, the number of the count representing the number of hanks of yarn to the pound weight. For the weaving of muslins comparatively high counts both of warp and of weft are required. The great achievement of Arkwright's water-frame was that by the twist it gave to the thread it made it hard enough for warp, and warp was accordingly known as 'twist', or hard yarn. ”

“ He wrote books of travel; books of descriptive politics (with which his name will perhaps be specially associated) ; studies in law, and studies in history. Two of his books—the Holy Roman Empire and the American Commonwealth—are permanent classics; two others—his Studies in History and Jurisprudence and his Modern Democracies—are mines of solid learning and searching observation. If he did not write on the classics, he was a sound classical scholar, with a classical scholar's gift of happy quotation. If he was a politician, he was also an educationalist. ”

“ It is, no doubt, perfectly true that historians cannot be expected to test his statements in detail; but on this he has, here at last, relied once too often. When he boasts that no one has ventured to answer his defence of the 'Chronicle' in 1871, [152] his fatal rashness betrays him: when he asserts, of Freeman's rejection of the 'Eudo' legend, that 'further consideration (and possibly a perusal of my article in defence of the Chronicle, printed in 1871) seems to have changed his opinion once more', [153] his assertion is contrary to fact. ”

“ Few as are the titles of the present writer to compose that notice, he has at any rate one—which he shares with many others—that he found in Bryce a generous inspiration and encouragement. For he was kind with a great kindness to young students: he would write to welcome their 'prentice efforts; he would gather them round his table, and encourage them by his suggestion and advice. He has left many monuments behind him. His books are possessions for ever in the student's library; the work which he did in politics is a permanent part of national, and indeed of international, history. ”

“ There is an internal logic which connects the work of Lord Bryce as a master of descriptive politics both with his embassy at Washington and with his labours in later years in the cause of a League of Nations. He was, indeed, following the most native and the most strongly marked of all his inclinations when he wrote on the institutions of other lands the United States, France, Switzerland, South Africa, and South America; for here the traveller was at one with the scholar, as the scholar was at one with the statesman. ”

“ Each time an old item presents itself for recopying to the scribe, he seems inclined to treat it more curtly and give it less space; if it is a group of items, such as the remnant of a sheriff's account, as in this case, instead of each item being accorded a line to itself, all are crowded together into as small a space as possible. Now, while every item in that of Ivo is still given a separate line, those of Serlo's account are all crowded together. ”

“ The first article of the petition was that the procurations for the second and third year should for several reasons be reduced. [32] The clergy urged that this new imposition was most burdensome and would become a precedent; the cardinals had exacted a full procuration both from England and from France; the church in England was oppressed by many wrongs and was unable to find so much money, and the sentences of excommunication were so stringently enforced by the cardinals that many of the clergy were suffering under them solely for their poverty. ”

“ When, therefore, we seek to discover a probable date for the fabrication of the legend, we may perhaps find a clue in the late period suggested by Dr. Armitage Robinson for the forged Colchester charters. I gather that, in his opinion, 'the Colchester forgery', as he styles the charter of 1119, in its present form cannot be earlier than the fourteenth century. [174] He points out that 'there can be no doubt that the Colchester fabricator had the so-called third charter of Edward the Confessor as his authority' when he concocted the charter to St. John's Abbey in its present form. ”

“ The reader may be safely left to draw his own conclusion from the endless gyrations of this elusive antiquary, who first admits that he is 'doubly wrong', and then announces that he is going to prove that his 'guess' was right!
Mr. Rye's treatment of Freeman is a very serious matter. If and where it can be proved that Freeman has erred in his statements, let them by all means be corrected; I myself should be the last to deny one's right to do so. ”

“ In the pages of this Review it is fitting that Lord Bryce should be more especially mentioned as a political observer and as an historian. As a political observer he had for his forerunners Montesquieu and Tocqueville, as he has for his successor (if we may speak of a successor) Mr. Lawrence Lowell, the author of a work on the Government of England which gives back to England in good measure what Lord Bryce gave to America in his volumes on the American Commonwealth. The cultivation of this field of descriptive politics is a matter of no small moment in the modern world. ”

“ In this little known and scarce essay he emphasized the true nature of the record as a series of enrolments of judgements, charters, grants and agreements, suggested by quotations that it was rather a roll (rotulus) than a book (liber) , and, by means of extracts from other records and collations, confirmed his earlier conclusion that the extracts in the College of Arms Manuscript were taken from the original Roll then (1580) in existence. ”

“ A system which depended upon memory was too uncertain for the orderly and judicial minds then engaged in developing a system of jurisprudence. The solemnity of the circumstances, the ceremonious public reading of documents, or making of oral admissions, were felt to require the establishment of an equally solemn written record which should bear unimpeachable testimony for the future. In this way we believe it was that the roll which took the name of the 'Domesday' Roll of Chester was started. ”

“ The new inventions had endowed certain forms of fixed capital with unexampled powers of production, and the disposal of the surplus thus created gave to the possessors of that capital the initiative and direction of new industrial enterprise. Although for some years to come Salte remained Oldknow's chief patron and adviser, it was the influence of Arkwright that from this time onwards determined his career and gradually transformed him from an 'eminent manufacturer' into a 'captain of industry'. ”

“ The weakest point in the Baronage is that lack of critical treatment which is seen in Dugdale's use of monastic evidence. As himself the editor of the first Monasticon—although the materials are said to have been chiefly collected by Dodsworth—he was, no doubt, apt to place excessive reliance, not merely on 'cartulary' charters of more or less doubtful validity, but on those curious narratives which were woven by grateful monks about the lives of those who had founded a religious house. ”

“ The king, having assured himself that administrative power shall not be in the hands of the nobles who have defied authority, is content to let it rest with new families which have proved their capacity. The administrative motive is present in these days even when the personal or political seems to prevail.
This holds good even where hereditary or baronial shrievalties remain. Miles of Gloucester, sheriff as well as constable of the realm, after the decease of his father, Walter, from 1128 to 1130 [69] held Staffordshire [70] along with the old family county. ”

“ But are there not already too many cotton mills? What would it cost to build and equip one? Would it not be better for Arkwright and Oldknow to exchange shares in their respective concerns? It would not be easy to borrow £5,000. Lenders expect land security and 5 per cent. He would like more details, but at present his opinion is unfavourable. Oldknow's account of the negotiations seems to have been reassuring. We may infer perhaps that the mill scheme was dropped and that Arkwright's support was to take another form. ”

“ The cause of his wrath, I gather from his list of governors, &c., of the castle, is that Eudo's brother, 'Hubert de Rye', was placed in charge of the castle, according to the 'Chronicle' (in 1074) , and that the evidence of the 'Chronicle' is not here accepted. [14] Mr. Rye, of course, has a right to his own opinion, but it is perfectly intolerable that he should bring a baseless charge of mala fides against those who do not share it. ”

“ In the List William is put down as a predecessor of Warin, sheriff for 1128–30, but no attempt is made to define his term of office more exactly. Yet, by observing the amount of William's indebtedness and by comparing it with the estimated amount of the annual farm for Wiltshire, it is possible to affirm that he certainly held the office for two years, and that, in all probability, he held it for three years. In the accounts of Dorset and Wiltshire, Warin is entered as accounting for both the 'old farm' and the 'new farm' of the two counties. ”

“ The agrarian history of East Anglia in the middle ages is the natural result of the form of society described in the Domesday survey of that region, but the East Anglian Domesday is at present a record in isolation. Few documents have been published to illustrate the working of the characteristic East Anglian economy in the early decades of the twelfth century. ”

“ When, therefore, the new spinning inventions began to be widely adopted the whole framework of the factory system had been erected at Stockport and was waiting to be taken over. Not only water-power and buildings but also the child labour could be transferred readily from silk to cotton. Henry Marsland, a cotton manufacturer at Bosden near Stockport, who had been one of the first to set the new spinning frames to work by horse-power, acquired in 1783 the Stockport silk-mill with the manorial water-rights, and became the first large cotton spinner in the town. ”

“ Both Twyne and the fourteenth-century writer of the Oriel College manuscript appear from their extracts to have been particularly impressed with Daniel's views concerning the creation rather than his retailing of astrological doctrine from Toledo. Twyne first repeats Daniel's statement that the quantity of the universe reveals the power of its Maker; its quality, His wisdom; and its marvellous beauty, His unbounded goodwill. Twyne also notes Daniel's phrase, 'court of the world', for the universe. ”

“ That an eminent manufacturer who claims to have established a new industry should regard £90 as a considerable outlay shows how small a part fixed capital in buildings or machinery as yet played in industrial enterprise. Although there was not much room in Oldknow's warehouse before it was enlarged, it is conceivable that it sufficed for his stock-in-trade at that time. ”

“ Americans honoured the encyclopaedic range of the scholar: they admired the observer who had written the classical work on their own commonwealth; they had an affection for the man himself, with whom it was so easy to talk, on a footing of simple equality, whether at receptions, or in clubs, or in the Pullman car of the railway train, or in any other place where men were gathered together. ”

“ There is the same subtraction of small parcels of land and the same withdrawal of tenants' homage. There is no doubt that the hominia of the writ represent the manredae of the memorandum. It is an important social fact that St. Benet could still claim the homage of twenty-two tenants in the two villages of Somerton and Winterton. In this corner of Norfolk, at any rate, manorial discipline had not yet superseded the ancient bond of homage, with all that it implied of the tenants' original independence. ”

“ It is clear from the memorandum itself that the encroachments which it records were not entirely the work of Roger Bigod and his Norman followers. They had begun before Roger can have entered into full possession of his Norfolk fee. Alwi of Thetford, the Egelwy of the memorandum and one of the wealthiest antecessores of Roger Bigod in Norfolk, had undoubtedly filled some official position in that county in the years immediately after the Conquest. ”

“ Adelard of Bath, philosopher, astronomer, and translator from the Arabic, remains an enigmatic figure in the early history of English learning. That he was no mere closet scholar appears from his connexion with the household of Henry I and the education of the young Henry II, [1] and is further evident from his hitherto unnoticed treatise on the royal sport of hawking. ”

“ Of its origin we know nothing.
This narrative was known to Dugdale, who used it in his Monasticon (editio prima) , and cited it thence in his Baronage (1675) . Morant, who thus came to know of it, drew upon it for his History of Colchester (1748) , but the first historian to deal with it, and the first to criticize its statements, seems to have been Freeman, whose works on the reigns of the Conqueror and his successor were conceived on so vast a scale that he was enabled to examine the whole of the evidence (in print) , good, bad, or indifferent, that might possibly bear upon his subject. ”

“ Walter Rye, the well-known Norfolk antiquary, was coming forward as an ardent champion of what he terms 'the Colchester Chronicle'. In a recently issued treatise [8] he claims that 'the reliability of this Chronicle', when first attacked, 'was at once defended by' himself, 'no answer appearing to' his 'defence'. This article, it seems, was 'printed in 1871'. It may not have occurred to Mr. Rye that historians have a better use for their time than writing replies to what he imagines to be convincing arguments. ”