On Wednesday, November 28th, 1883, a Paper was read by Mr. OSMUND AIRY upon "Lauderdale and the Restoration in Scotland." This Paper appeared in the "Quarterly Review" for April, 1884; and as the rules of that Review do not allow of the republication of its articles until a year has elapsed, it is omitted from these Transactions. It may, however, be stated, that the Paper was drawn from entirely original sources, the chief of these being the Lauderdale MSS. in the British Museum, and that it traced, by the new light thus obtained, the career of Lauderdale and the government of Scotland up to the passing of the Act of Supremacy in 1669.

Sachsen Chronik von Eike von Repgow. XIII. Century.
Die Kriegsfahrten der Bremer von F. Wagenfeldt. 1846.

Aberglabe und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg. L. Strackerjan.

1867.

Geschichte Bremens, von Johann Krüger. 1855.

There are few episodes in the early history of Germany which seem to me to be better worth remembering, or more generally forgotten, than that of the Stedingers. A score or more of chroniclers and historians have written more or less about them, yet their deeds are still comparatively unknown, and their heroic struggle and disastrous fate are very generally forgotten. Indeed, their very name is so little known that, in telling their story now, it seems to be necessary to go back to the beginning and to tell of their origin and something of the land in which they lived.

Several years ago, when I was tramping through the lowlying marsh lands of Northern Germany, I found among the peasants a tradition that in very early times those lands were thickly populated. Two heroes, however, Hengist and Horsa by name, had sailed out of the river Weser, and, after invading England, sent back glowing accounts of the lands which they had conquered. Whereupon nearly the whole population of the marshes emigrated, not even leaving enough people behind them to prevent the reclaimed lands from reverting to their original condition.

To one man I ventured to express a doubt as to the historic accuracy of this tradition, stating that it was not generally believed that the Saxon invaders of England had gone from the Weser lands. I was answered, however, by my companion pointing triumphantly to the crossed horse-heads, rudely carved in wood, which form the ordinary finial of the gables of the farm houses thereabouts. Those, he told me, were to commemorate Hengist and Horsa, and had been used, from time immemorial, for that purpose.

However, be the reason what it may, there seems to have been little or no trace of cultivation, at the beginning of the XII. century, in the bogs lying south of the Frisian country, -north of the city of Bremen, and along both sides of the river Weser-a district now forming part of the territories of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, the Free City of Bremen, and the Province of Hanover. It was there that the Counts of Oldenburg and the Archbishop of Bremen seem to have united in an invitation to settlers to come and drain and reclaim those lands, offering attractive privileges by way of inducement. These seem to have been sufficient, and it was not long before a colony of hardy, adventurous men,-Dutch, Frisian, Saxon and Sclave-was hard at work dyking and ditching, and making fertile farms where only bogs had been.

At that time the German peasant was fast sinking into a state of serfdom. The aristocracy was encroaching more and more upon the individual rights and liberties which remained and, as a rule, the peasants made no resistance.

One reason for this supineness on the part of the peasantry may be found in the fact that the more active and enterprising of their number were finding a fresh outlet for their energies in the new towns which were springing up throughout the empire, and in the defiant, new-born, self-asserting middle-class. This product of the sheltering walls of the towns, was but beginning to learn its power, and to demand as rights hitherto unheard of privileges.

The custom of granting various desirable things, as payment to the people for services rendered, was the one upon which the lords of Bremen and Oldenburg founded their plan for populating and reclaiming the marshes. Colonists were induced to come by promises that they should own the land themselves as free and independent farmers, subject only to two charges, the Holler tax and the Holler tithe. This tax was much the same as a modern tax or rate, inasmuch as the ruler or lord claimed as sovereign but had otherwise no proprietorship in the land. It amounted, according to Allmers, to about twopence-halfpenny, English, per 21,000 square feet. The Holler tithes were the ordinary church tithes, less one per cent, and it was stipulated that the fruit tithes, which, owing to the nature of the land, must be insignificant, should be paid in kind, but the animal tithe might be paid in money at a low and fixed valuation.

In settling these matters the Archbishop reserved his share of the taxes for himself, as sovereign archbishop, distributing the tithes among the various churches and religious bodies of the diocese. By these conditions the settlers were wholly free from all feudal obligations, and seemed to have owed no especial allegi ance to any one, save, in a general way, to the Emperor and the Pope,

With such encouragement the land was soon well peopled and prosperous. Comfortable houses and rich pasture lands appeared on every side-made possible by the laboriously constructed and carefully maintained systems of dykes and ditches.

The new people governed themselves, somewhat after the fashion of their northern neighbours, the free Frisians. They had