HISTORICAL HANDBOOKS EDITED BY OSCAR BROWNING, M.A. FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; ASSISTANT-MASTER AT HISTORICAL HANDBOOKS. HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE. Adapted from the French of M. Demogeot. By CHRISTIANA BRIDGE. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS. By PHILIP VERNON SMITH, M.A., Barrister at Law; Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLISH LAW. By ROLAND KNYVET WILSON, M.A., Barrister at Law; late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. THE SUPREMACY OF ATHENS. By R. C. JEBB, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Public Orator of the University. THE ROMAN REVOLUTION. From B.C. 133 to the Battle of Actium. By H. F. PELHAM, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer of Exeter College, Oxford. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. From A.D. 400 to 800. By A. M. CURTEIS, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and Assistant-Master at Sherborne School. ENGLISH HISTORY IN THE XIVTH CENTURY. By CHARLES H. PEARSON, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By the Rev. J. FRANCK BRIGHT, M.A., late Master of the Modern School at Marlborough College. THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. By W. R. ANSON, M.A., Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford.' THE GREAT Rebellion. By OSCAR BROWNING, M.A. THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI. By F. WILLERT, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and Assistant-Master at Eton College. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS BY PHILIP VERNON SMITH, M.A. BARRISTER-AT-LAW; FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE OTHE RIVINGTONS London, Orford, and Cambridge 1873 226. k. 262. PREFACE. THE various institutions of which the English Constitution, in its present complex form, is made up, are capable of being classified, and must, in order to be profitably studied, be classified under three or four leading divisions. From one point of view they are divisible into local and central; from another, into legislative, judicial, executive or administrative, and fiscal. Then, again, they may be classified as civil and ecclesiastical, or as social and political. And the leading divisions may be subdivided; as, for instance, the local into rural and municipal. In the present volume the attention of the student will be directed to the origin of our local institutions on the one hand, and of our central government on the other, to the various phases of the development of both, and to the manner in which the latter gradually superseded and suppressed the former in their original shape, and then created a new local machinery to supply the want which their extinction had occasioned. He will also be called upon to obşerve the gradual limitation and separation into their |