the severed
races became really united, as Englishmen alike. Then the greatest
of the Plantagenets, Edward the First, the pupil of the man he slew
at Evesham, was proud to call himself an Englishman--the first
truly English king since the days of the hapless Harold; and one of
whom, in spite of the misrepresentations of Scottish historians and
novelists, English boys may be justly proud: his noble legislation
was the foundation of that modern English jurisprudence, in which
all are alike in the eyes of the law.

Not long after came the terrible "hundred years war," wherein
Englishmen, led by the descendants of their Norman and French
conquerors, retaliated upon Normandy and France the woes they had
themselves endured. Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt avenged
Hastings; the siege of Rouen under Henry the Fifth was a strange
Nemesis. During that century the state of France was almost as sad
as that of England during the earlier period; it was but a field
for English youth to learn the arts of warfare at the expense of
the wretched inhabitants.

But these events, sad or glorious, as the reader, according to his
age, may consider them, were long subsequent to the date of our
tale; they may, however, well be before the mind of the youthful
student as he sighs over the woes of the Conquest.

Two remarks which the writer has made in the prefaces to the former
Chronicles he will venture to repeat, as essential to the subject
in each case.

He has not, as is so common with authors who treat of this period,
clothed the words of his speakers in an antique phraseology. He
feels sure that men and boys spoke a language as free and easy in
the times in question as our compatriots do now. We cannot present
the Anglo-Saxon or Norman French they really used, and to load the
work with words culled from Chaucer would be simply an anachronism;
hence he has freely translated the speech of his characters into
the modern vernacular.

Secondly, he always calls the Anglo-Saxons as they called
themselves, "English;" the idea prevalent some time since, and
which even finds its place in the matchless story of Ivanhoe, or in
that striking novelette by Charles Mackay, "The Camp of Refuge,"
that they called themselves or were called "Saxons," is now utterly
exploded among historians. It is true the Welsh, the Picts, and
Scots called them by that designation, and do still; {iii} but
they had but one name for themselves, as the pages of the
Anglo