“The study of Constitutional History is essentially a tracing of causes and consequences; the examination of a distinct growth from a well-defined germ to full maturity: a growth, the particular shaping and direction of which are due to a diversity of causes, but whose life and developing power lies deep in the very nature of the people. It is not then the collection of a multitude of facts and views, but the piecing of the links of a perfect chain.”

— William Stubbs

Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History (1870; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913) p. xv.

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William Stubbs 4

English historian and clergyman 1825–1901

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