THIS is one of the series of Studies in Church
History, and will be welcome because so little has yet been printed about
the Black Friars, while their rivals, the Grey Friars, have long been a favoured subject for historical essays. Unhappily the records of the English province have been completely lost, and Mrs. Formoy has had to make her bricks without straw, except in so far as the records of the Order as a whole are 'concerned with English affairs. It is interesting to learn that the English province showed a marked leaning to indepen- dence and nationalism in the late fourteenth century, in spite of the rigidly international organization of the Order. Mrs. Formoy attributes this to the national character, but it -may
reasonably be attributed to the political isolation of England during the Hundred Years' War, 'which determined its adher- ence to the Roman obedience, while France and the Dominican
Order as a body favoured Avignon. The author is at her best in describing the nunnery for Dominican sisters at Dartford,
and explaining how the nuns, who could hold property, were used by Edward HI. as trustees for the brethren at King's Langley who could not: The proof-reading, especially of proper names and of documents in-Latin, leaves much to be desired, and the book is rather loosely put 'together.
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