truth than one by Froude or Gasquet. To illustrate my meaning from contemporary events: some future historian will undoubtedly write fairly and impartially about Tariff Reform, Women’s Suffrage, and National Insurance. He will thereby completely miss the significance of those movements; for the propaganda and personalities of Mr. Lloyd George, Mrs. Pankhurst, and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain are not matters for cool and impartial consideration, and it will only be by the blessed gift of prejudice that the future historian will be able to enter into the feelings of the present generation and obtain the true neo-Georgian atmosphere.

The Chronicles which form the chief of my subsidiary sources are sufficiently full of life and prejudice. Very human were many of those old writers, from that brilliant Welsh proto-journalist Gerald de Barri down to those worthy Londoners Gregory and Fabyan. Best of all are the rhymesters; there is a vigour and a wealth of detail in their work which endears them to me, and I could view the loss of Lydgate’s Siege of Troye or of the unreadable grandfather of English poetry, Beowulf, with greater equanimity than the loss of such pieces as the account of the Siege of Rouen which John Page wrote

‘Alle in raffe and not in ryme
By cause of space he hadde no tyme.’

Few poems can equal this piece in its spirited portrayal of military operations in the fifteenth century, the two sides to the picture, the pageantry of the army and the sufferings of the non-combatants, being contrasted with remarkable dramatic power in the passage which tells how two pavilions were pitched between the English camp and the walls of the city for the delegates appointed by the rival nations to discuss terms of peace.

‘That was a syght of solempnyte,
To beholde eyther other parte,
To se hir pavylyons in hir araye
The pepylle that on the wallys laye,
And oure pepylle that was with owte,
Howe thycke they stode and walkyd abowte.
Also hyt was solas to sene
The herrowdys of armys that went by twyne;
Kyngys, herrowdys and pursefauntys
In cotys of armys suauntys,
The Englysche beeste, the Fraynysche floure,
Of Portynggale castelle and toure;
Othyr in cotys of dyversyte,
As lordys berys in hys degre.
Gayly with golde they were begon,
Ryght as the son for sothe hyt schone.
Thys syght was bothe joye and chere;
Of sorowe and payne the othyr were.
Of pore pepylle there were put owte
And nought as moche as a clowte
But the clothes on there backe
To kepe them from rayne I wotte.
The weder was unto them a payne,
For alle that tyme stode most by rayne.
There men myght se grete pytte,
A chylde of ij yere or iij
Go aboute to begge hyt brede.
Fadyr and modyr bothe were dede.
Undyr sum the watyr stode;
Yet lay they cryyng aftyr foode.
And sum storvyn unto the dethe,
And sum stoppyde of ther brethe,
Sum crokyd in the kneys,
And sum alle so lene as any treys,
And wemmen holden in thir armys
Dede chyldryn in hyr barmys.
····
Thes were the syghtys of dyfferauns,
That one of joye and that other of penaunce,
As helle and hevyn ben partyd a to,
That one of welle and that othyr of wo.’

The whole poem shows a Pre-Raphaelite love of detail combined with a remarkable appreciation of dramatic values, and the same is true of many of the other rhyming chronicles, political poems, and topical ballads. As an example of the value of these poems for interpreting the mediæval spirit I might instance the light thrown on ‘the days of chivalry’ by the ‘Maréchal’ poem. In this glorification of the great Earl of Pembroke the business-like record of the monetary profits resulting from his prowess at tournaments takes the gilt off the gingerbread ‘Knight errant’ as completely as the details of the wholesale slaughter and subsequent sale of the bag after a fashionable battue strip the gilt from the modern ‘sportsman.’ In view of the eminently quotable character of these rhymes it is really rather remarkable that I should have made so little use of them in any of my essays, covering, as these do, so wide a range of subject. It is also a great pity that they are so much neglected by those whose business it is to teach history. The intelligent use of such materials as these would make history live, but unfortunately there is a widespread idea that dates are the be-all and end-all of history, which delusion is fostered by the importance attached to dates in the ordinary accursed examination. Whereas in reality dates are utterly unimportant and of no value in themselves, but useful solely as memoriæ technicæ for grasping the sequence of events; there being, for instance, no significance whatever—except possibly for astrologers—in the isolated facts that the Black Death occurred in 1349, and that the Peasants’ Rising happened in 1381, but very great significance in the fact that the one event was a generation after the other. However, a discussion of the right and wrong methods of teaching history is rather too big a subject to be dragged in at the end of these rambling remarks, which were intended to be an introduction to the essays which follow, so, if any readers have followed the unusual course of starting with the introduction, I will take my leave of them at this point and wish them a pleasant journey through these Mediæval Byways.

CONTENTS