here we have so often roved
together. E. L. B.

LONDON, January, 1843.

PREFACE TO THE LAST OF THE BARONS

This was the first attempt of the author in Historical Romance upon
English ground. Nor would he have risked the disadvantage of comparison
with the genius of Sir Walter Scott, had he not believed that that great
writer and his numerous imitators had left altogether unoccupied the
peculiar field in Historical Romance which the Author has here sought to
bring into cultivation. In "The Last of the Barons," as in "Harold,"
the aim has been to illustrate the actual history of the period, and
to bring into fuller display than general History itself has done the
characters of the principal personages of the time, the motives by which
they were probably actuated, the state of parties, the condition of
the people, and the great social interests which were involved in what,
regarded imperfectly, appear but the feuds of rival factions.

"The Last of the Barons" has been by many esteemed the best of the
Author's romances; and perhaps in the portraiture of actual character,
and the grouping of the various interests and agencies of the time, it
may have produced effects which render it more vigorous and lifelike
than any of the other attempts in romance by the same hand.

It will be observed that the purely imaginary characters introduced are
very few; and, however prominent they may appear, still, in order not
to interfere with the genuine passions and events of history, they are
represented as the passive sufferers, not the active agents, of the
real events. Of these imaginary characters, the most successful is
Adam Warner, the philosopher in advance of his age; indeed, as an ideal
portrait, I look upon it as the most original in conception, and the
most finished in execution, of any to be found in my numerous prose
works, "Zanoni" alone excepted.

For the rest, I venture to think that the general reader will obtain
from these pages a better notion of the important age, characterized by
the decline of the feudal system, and immediately preceding that great
change in society which we usually date from the accession of Henry
VII., than he could otherwise gather, without wading through a vast mass
of neglected chronicles and antiquarian dissertations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE ADVENTURES OF MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE

CHAPTER

I The Pastime-ground of old Cockaigne
II The Broke