Erskine May's "Constitutional History"

This site now contains the full text of Sir Thomas Erskine May's "Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George the Third", first published in 1861. Many thanks to Mr Edward King, of Bingley, Yorkshire, for the loan of Volumes II and III.

The text is scanned from the 11th edition, of 1896 (Volume I) and the 7th, of 1882 (Volumes II and III), and, I think, is unchanged since the third, of 1871, the last published in the author's lifetime. The "Supplementary Chapter" at the end of Volume III deals with events from 1861 to 1871.

Below is a summary of the contents of each volume, with links to a more detailed table of contents for each volume, as well as to the beginning of each chapter. Notification of typos is especially welcome—I don't suppose that I have spotted all the scanning errors.

Email me here

The main text is intended to be as in the original, including the punctuation, which is a bit excessive to modern eyes. Original page numbers appear in square brackets at positions corresponding to the start of each page. I have omitted the less useful footnotes, and renumbered the ones remaining.

A contemporary review of the book, from the "New Englander and Yale Review" of April 1862 is here

Volume I

Volume II

Volume III

Index