Access to the countryside of England and Wales: public/private partnership or the privatisation of public rights?

This paper examines the evolution of public rights of access to private land in England and Wales. Since the Eighteenth Century the administration and protection of these rights has been though a form of public/private partnership in which the judiciary, while maintaining the dominance of private property, have safeguarded de facto public access by refusing consistently to punish simple trespass. While this situation has been modified, principally by post-World War II legislation, to allow for some formalisation of access arrangements and consequent compensation to landowners in areas of high recreational pressure and low legal accessibility, recent policy initiatives suggest that the balance of the partnership has now shifted in favour of landowners. In particular, the new access payment schemes, developed by the UK Government in response to the European Commission's Agri-Environment Regulations, locate the landowner as the beneficiary of the partnership, financed by tax revenue and justified on the spurious basis of improved 'access provision'. As such the state, as the former upholder of citizen rights, now assumes the duplicitous position of underwriting private property ownership through the commodification of access, while proclaiming a significant improvement in citizens' access rights.

Biochemical evolution II: Origin of life in tubular microstructures on weathered feldspar surfaces

Mineral surfaces were important during the emergence of life on Earth because the assembly of the necessary complex biomolecules by random collisions in dilute aqueous solutions is implausible. Most silicate mineral surfaces are hydrophilic and organophobic and unsuitable for catalytic reactions, but some silica-rich surfaces of partly dealuminated feldspars and zeolites are organophilic and potentially catalytic. Weathered alkali feldspar crystals from granitic rocks at Shap, north west England, contain abundant tubular etch pits, typically 0.4–0.6 μm wide, forming an orthogonal honeycomb network in a surface zone 50 μm thick, with 2–3 × 106 intersections per mm2 of crystal surface. Surviving metamorphic rocks demonstrate that granites and acidic surface water were present on the Earth’s surface by ∼3.8 Ga. By analogy with Shap granite, honeycombed feldspar has considerable potential as a natural catalytic surface for the start of biochemical evolution. Biomolecules should have become available by catalysis of amino acids, etc. The honeycomb would have provided access to various mineral inclusions in the feldspar, particularly apatite and oxides, which contain phosphorus and transition metals necessary for energetic life. The organized environment would have protected complex molecules from dispersion into dilute solutions, from hydrolysis, and from UV radiation. Sub-micrometer tubes in the honeycomb might have acted as rudimentary cell walls for proto-organisms, which ultimately evolved a lipid lid giving further shelter from the hostile outside environment. A lid would finally have become a complete cell wall permitting detachment and flotation in primordial “soup.” Etch features on weathered alkali feldspar from Shap match the shape of overlying soil bacteria.

Letter from Rufus King to William Tudor,

One letter regarding a meeting between the elder William Tudor and the King of England at the Court of Saint James.

The Beauties of England and Wales; or, Delineations, topographical, historical, and descriptive, of each county.

For full contents note see NUC pre-1956 cited above.

The commerce and prospects of England, and a review of the agricultural, iron, and cotton trades.

Mode of access: Internet.

Luther's reply to King Henry VIII, now first Englished after the lapse of four centuries,

Mode of access: Internet.

The history of the Norman conquest of England : its causes and its results /

v. 1. The preliminary history to the election of Eadward the Confessor. 1877.--v. 2. The reign of Eadward the Confessor. 1877.--v. 3. The reign of Harold and the interregnum. 1875.--v. 4. The reign of William the Conqueror. 1876.--v. 5. The effects of the Norman conquest. 1876.--v. 6. Index volume. 1879.

The second part of the Institutes of the laws of England. Containing the exposition of many ancient, and other statutes; whereof you may see the particulars in a table following.

Text of earlier laws in Latin or French.

The second part of the Institutes of the lawes of England. Containing the exposition of many ancient, and other statutes; whereof you may see the particulars in a table following ...

Frontispiece (port.) and table ([40] p. at end) wanting.

The third part of the Institutes of the laws of England: concerning high treason, and other pleas of the crown, and criminal causes.

Initials; manuscript marginal notes.

Fortescutus illustratus, or a commentary on that nervous treatise De laudibus legum Angliæ, written by Sir John Fortescue ... VVhich treatise ... hee purposely wrote to consolidate his princely minde in love and approbation of the good lawes of England and of the laudable customs of this his native country. The heroique design of whole excellent judgement and loyal addiction to his Prince, is humbly endeavoured to be revived, admired, and advanced.

Mode of access: Internet.

Institutes of the laws of England : containg the exposition of many ancient and other statutes ... /

Mode of access: Internet.

Omitted chapters of the history of England from the death of Charles I. to the battle of Dunbar.

Vol. II. has title: History of the commonwealth of England from the death of Charles I to the expulsion of the Long Parliament by Cromwell: being omitted chapters of the history of England.

The lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England.

Vol. 8, edited after the author's death, by Mary Scarlett Campbell, 1869.