Both in conception and execution it is a noble series of volumes. Maitland's interest in law was not bounded by a province, a period, or a country; and the thirteen good and lawful men who on November 24, 1886, signed the letter from which the Selden Society sprang did not make their appeal to the Bar and Bench of England in the cause of any narrow or pedantic antiquarian curiosity. The Common law of England ruled two vast continents, and was the concern of Americans, Canadians, and Australians as well as of Englishmen and Irishmen. Its history had never been written; few of the materials for its exploration had been given to the world. There was no scientific grammar or glossary of the Anglo-French language; there was no accurate dictionary of law terms; a great province, that of Anglo-Saxon law, had fallen into the occupation of the Germans. A short account of some of the principal classes of Records which might be dealt with by the Society was appended to the first two volumes and exhibited a prospect of great breadth, richness and variety. The state of the Criminal law in early times might be shown from the Eyre rolls and Assize rolls. The records of the Court of the Exchequer and the Court of Chancery, the Privy Council Registers, the proceedings before the Star chamber, the Court of Requests and the Court of Augmentations would illustrate the history of royal justice in its different sides and in different ages, in the formative period of legal and parliamentary growth, in the dreary turmoil of Lancastrian anarchy, under the vigorous despotism of the Tudors and in the dust of the great conflict which led to the Civil War. Then there were the records of the Courts Christian, of the Courts of the Forest and the Manor, records illustrating the history of the Palatine jurisdictions, the franchises of the Lords Marchers of Wales, the Court of the Staple in London and Calais, the Court of Castle Chamber in Dublin. Borough customs would throw light on one quarter of history; records of the Stanneries of Devon and Cornwall upon another. The origins of mercantile and international law might be explored; and closer knowledge could be obtained of many important State trials by a systematic account of the contents of the _Baga de Secretis_. The Society held out the further hope of scientific contributions to the knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon law and Anglo-French language of the Year Books.