its lawfulness might arise. But it was just as certain that the three Estates would sanction the forfeiture of Huntly or the return of Lennox as it is to-day that an agreement may be stamped and so made to hold in law. This is not the view that has appealed to Scottish historians. The late Mr. Hill Burton maintained a position almost the reverse of the thesis we have proposed. But, with all deference to that distinguished scholar, one may be allowed to argue that he wrote with all the prejudices of a Whig of the middle of the nineteenth century. Constitutional progress was, for him, as for other writers on this subject, the only justification of a nation's existence. It did not seem possible that a people could advance worthily, except as England had advanced. This predisposition to find in Scotland an analogy to English parliamentary institutions was encouraged by the occurrence of many words and phrases in the rolls of the Scottish Parliament which seem to the English student quite decisive in favour of a "constitutional" point of view. But the history of institutions cannot be written from their own records. If we possessed, as material for the constitutional history of Scotland, only the "Acts" of the Scottish Parliament, our conclusions would be more radically false than if there remained to us only the narratives of the chroniclers and the more strictly political documents. The "Acts" are written in cipher and we have to find the key. An important part, for example, of the records of the revolutions of 1560 and 1640 is to be found in the volumes which contain the parliamentary proceedings; but, as we shall have occasion to notice, the explanation lies elsewhere. It is a further illustration of our contention, that so few contemporary writers were sufficiently impressed by the Parliament to give any space to the story of its growth. No man knew the powers of his time better than did John Knox; and in Knox's _History of the Reformation in Scotland_ there are very few references to the Scottish Parliament, and only one of these is more than incidental. In this respect, Knox is a fair specimen of early historians. The only exception is George Buchanan, who tells of many meetings of "the Estates, who possess the supreme power in everything."[12] Buchanan's historical reputation is not sufficiently high to lend much importance to his unattested word; and the emphasis which he lays upon the action of Parliament is so unusual that it has led to Father Innes's conjecture that he wrote his "History" in the interests of a republican theory of government.[13] Although Innes had all the prejudices of a Jacobite who lived before Culloden, his scholarship was undoubted, and his accusation is striking testimony to the small place held by Parliament in the pages of Buchanan's predecessors and contemporaries.