Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/14

 Dedication. number of plain fa6ls, in a popular form, to enable the general reader to forrri a corre6l view of Englilli manners and fentiments in the middle ages, and I can venture to claim for ray book at leafi: the merit of being the refult of original refearch. It is not a compilation from writers who have written on the fubje6t before. There are at leaft two ways of arranging a work like this. I might have taken each particular divilion of the fubje6t, one after the other, and traced it feparately through the period of hiftory which this volume embraces ; or the whole fubje£t might be divided into hiftorical periods, in each of which all the different phafes of focial hiftory for that period are included. Each of thefe plans has its advantages and defe6ts. In the firft, the reader would perhaps obtain a clearer notion of the hifiory of any particular divilion of the fubjeft, as of the hiftory of the table and of diet, or of games and amufements, or the like, but at the fame time it would have required a certain etfort of comparifon and ftudy to arrive at a clear view of the general queftion at a particular period. The fecond furnilhes this general view, but entails a certain amount of what might almoft be called repetition. I have chofen the latter plan, becaufe I think this repetition will be found to be only apparent, and it feems to me the beft arrangement for a popular book. The divifion of periods, too, is, on the whole, natural, and not arbitrary. During the Anglo-Saxon period, the focial fyftem, however developed or modified from time to time, was ftri6tly that of our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and was the undoubted groundwork of our own. The Norman conqueft brought in foreign Ibcial manners and fentiments totally dift'erent from thofe of the Anglo-Saxons, which for a time predominated, but became gradually incorporated with the Anglo- Saxon manners and fpirit, until, towards the end of the twelfth century, they formed the Englifli of the middle ages. The Anglo-Norman period, therefore, may be confidered as an age of tranfition — it may perhaps be dcfcribed as that of the ftruggle between the fpirit of Anglo- Saxon fociety and feudalifm. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries may be confidered in regard to fociety as the Englilh middle ages — the age of feudalifm in its Englilh form — and therefore hold properly the largeft