Page:The history of Fulk Fitz-Warine - tr. Kemp-Welch - 1904.djvu/16

 by Leland and by Sir Thomas Duftus Hardy; it has been made use of by Thomas Wright in his History of Ludlow; and the general results of the works of which it has formed the subject-matter have been well summarized, reviewed, and greatly enriched by Mr. H. L. D. Ward in his ''Catalogue of Romances in the Department of MSS. in the British Museum'' (vol. 1, pp. 501-508).

Ambiguous Character of the Text.—Sir Thomas Duftus Hardy, on p. 41 of vol. 3 of his Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the history of Great Britain and Ireland to the end of the reign of Henry VII (London, 1871), has already recognized the ambiguous character of this work. "It seems," he says, "to be partly romance and partly history." The editors who came after him did no more than develop this remark of the great English scholar, and the sum and substance of their dissertations is, that Fulk Fitz-Warine is an historical romance containing much romance and a little history.

Its Foundation on Fact.—Such history as it contains has been revealed by a study of the Public Rolls which concern Fulk and the other Fitz-Warines, and which have been very conveniently, and almost in their entirety, collected by the Rev. W. Eyton in his