le_ had come out,
Eileen Power collected notes and made plans for several essays to be
included in an enlarged edition of the book. Of these essays only one,
"The Precursors", had been written out in full before she died; and it
has now been added to the present edition. In its published form it is
not in every respect identical with the author's original text.

The essay was taking shape as Munich came and went and as the war itself
was drawing near. No historian writing at that time about Rome menaced
by the barbarians--and least of all an historian as sensitive to the
extra-mural world as Eileen Power was--could have helped noting the
similarities between the Roman Empire in the fifth or sixth centuries
and Europe in the nineteen-thirties. In the end, having finished the
essay, she decided to withold it from publication for the time being and
to present it instead to a friendly audience as a tract for the times.
This she did at a meeting of the Cambridge History Club in the winter of
1938: and for that occasion she replaced the opening and concluding
pages of the original essay with passages, or rather notes for passages,
more suited to the purpose.

I am sure that she never intended these passages to be perpetuated in
her _Medieval People_ and I have therefore done what I could to replace
them with a reconstructed version of her first draft. The reconstruction
had to be done from somewhat disjointed notes and cannot therefore be
word-faithful. The readers must therefore bear in mind that the first
two and the last page of the essay are mere approximations to what
Eileen Power in fact wrote.

_April_, 1963 M.M. POSTAN _Peterhouse, Cambridge_.

_Contents_

I THE PRECURSORS

II BODO, A FRANKISH PEASANT IN THE TIME OF
CHARLEMAGNE

III MARCO POLO, A VENETIAN TRAVELLER OF THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURY

IV MADAME EGLENTYNE, CHAUCER'S PRIORESS IN
REAL LIFE

V THE MENAGIER'S WIFE, A PARIS HOUSEWIFE
IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

VI THOMAS BETSON, A MERCHANT OF THE STAPLE
IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

VII THOMAS PAYCOCKE OF COGGESHALL, AN ESSEX
CLOTHIER IN THE DAYS OF HENRY VII

NOTES AND SOURCES

NOTES ON ILLUSTRATIONS

INDEX

_List of Illustrations_

I BODO AT HIS WORK 20
From _MS. Tit. B.V., Pt. I_. British Museum

II EMBARKATION OF THE POLOS AT VENICE 21
From _Bodleian MS. 264_. Oxford

III PART OF A LANDSCAPE BY CHAO ME