The Belden Society has issued to its members, as the
thirty- eighth volume of its publications, a new part of the Year Books of Edward II., for Michaelmas term, 1312 (Quaritch, 52s. (id. net), admirably edited by Sir Paul Vinogradoff and Dr. Ehrlich. In the introduction the editors give further evidence for the accepted view that " the so-called Year Books consist of unofficial reports based on notes made in court by apprentices who followed the proceedings " ; they point out that John de Redenhale, clerk of the Common Bench, was probably the informant for private discussions among the judges. The reports, now properly edited for the first time, abound in curiously vivid passages of dialogue, which show that Chief Justice Bereford and his colleagues and the counsel pleading before him were a very human set of people. The interest of these Year Books is mainly technical, of course, but they recall the living men of the time and show that the early fourteenth- century courts had sound principles which they did not always follow.
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