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THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF SCOTLAND TO THE REFORMATION. By James Mackinnon, assisted by J. A. R. Mackinnon. (Longmans. 16s. net.) Professor Mackinnon has done a valuable piece of work in summing up the results of modern research into the develop- ment of Scottish institutions. For lack of evidence the early period must always remain obscure. We shall, before long, probably know more about Assyria and Babylon than we can ever know about pre-Norman Scotland. Still, Professor Mackinnon has been able, by using the scanty Celtic material, to throw a little new light on the obscurities from which Columba, Malcolm and Macbeth and a few other notable figures faintly emerge. His account of the rise of feudalism, especially under David I., is carefully written, and on the whole solidly based. For the Middle Ages, his chapters on the monarchy and the Church are particularly good and clear. He agrees on the whole with the recent critics who minimize the importance of the Scottish Parliament, as distinct from the Lords of the Articles, a Committee of the Estates which virtually eclipsed the parent body. Was the Tudor Parlia- ment, he asks, any more influential ? The question raises large issues, -but-we should hesitate to endorse the author's suggestion that our Reformation Parliament merely registered the royal will.
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