The Constitution of England

A Note on the Text

xxiii a note on the text This edition of The Constitution of England presents the 1784 version of De Lolme’s text. My principal aim as editor has been to make the work more accessible to a modern reader by clarifying the many (now obscure) historical episodes, political institutions, and practices, and by identifying the classical and modern authorities De Lolme invoked. Editorial annotations to De Lolme’s main text appear as numbered footnotes. Annotations to De Lolme’s original notes are enclosed in double square brackets inserted into the body of the note. Page breaks in the 1784 edition are indicated by the use of angle brackets. (For example, page 112 begins after .) In checking and translating De Lolme’s quotations from classical sources, I have consulted, where available, editions in the Loeb Classical Library. I have been aided by the translations in William Hughes Hughes’s edition of The Constitution of England (London, 1834). Like many early modern writers, De Lolme was casual in his references to other authors, often trustingmemory.Furthermore,hereliedonversions of texts that have since been superseded. I have not tried to correct De Lolme’s citations and instead have only noted those instances where the quotations in his text involve significant variation from an original source. Obvious typographical errors in the text have been silently corrected. Before 1752, England retained the Julian (or “Old Style”) calendar, in which the New Year is taken to begin on March 25. I have adjusted dates so that the New Year starts on January 1. This is awkward when dealing with events relating to the Glorious Revolution, which to contemporaries occurred in 1688 and to moderns in 1689. To deal with these few episodes, I have used the inelegant formula: 1688/89. ...