e
history of the British Isles or their people has been overlooked, and
that the passing over of the political and constitutional phases in
order to select the purely social has been an endeavor much furthered
by the writers to whom reference is made in the body of the work, and
many others who could not be mentioned without burdening the text.
Each fibre of the thread of interest has been taken hold of at the
point of its appearance, and then not lost sight of until the end.
So that if one is interested in the subject of costume, he may find
a full and accurate description of dress from the time when tattooing
was deemed largely sufficient up to the period of the present, when
the variety of feminine attire baffles description. But more serious
subjects, such as woman's rights, from the recognition of primal
rights in her person to the setting forth of the modern programme
under that description, are consecutively treated through the
chapters.

A debt of gratitude cannot be discharged, but some recognition may be
made of the author's sense of the service rendered him in the writing
of this work by Dr. John Martin Vincent, associate professor of
history in Johns Hopkins University, whose courses in the social
history of England furnished the first incentive to range in that
field and a guide through the labyrinth of manners and customs of
the English people. Thanks are due to Mr. J.A. Burgan, whose close
and careful reading of the proof is not the least factor in the
presentation of the book free, as the writer believes, of the errors
that only eternal vigilance may exclude.

BARTLETT BURLEIGH JAMES.

CHAPTER I

THE WOMEN OF PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

It is to the unpremeditated contributions of savage and barbarous
conditions of existence that we must look for those primal elements of
social order which became fundamental in English life and character.
Insomuch as those contributions are intimately connected with woman's
life and work, they must be sought out and set in order if we are to
trace the development of the status of the women of Britain. In doing
this, the confines of history proper must be disregarded and the
inquiry commenced at the earliest period at which the student of
the geology of Britain has been able to discover evidences of human
occupancy of the country. If a consecutive account of the history
of woman in Britain were intended, we should be content to begin the
story with the woman of t