Page:The history of Fulk Fitz-Warine - tr. Kemp-Welch - 1904.djvu/18

 week (April 19 to 25) of 1215, and joined Robert FitzWalter; and it was not till more than a year after King John's death that Fulk made his peace again, and obtained reseizen of his lands, namely in November 1217. He continued to be regarded as a dangerous Baron Marcher; and in November 1222, the Earl of Chester was urged to inspect the fortifications going on at Whittington Castle, and to see that they were not made stronger than were required for the purpose of resisting the Welsh ... There are indications that Fulk IV. acted for his father during the last years of his life; and this again favours an assertion made by the romancer, namely, that he was blind for seven years. He seems to have died before August 1260."

Its Element of Romance.—Such are the historic data on which the author's work has been built up. To these he has added anachronisms, matter purely imaginative, faithful and picturesque descriptions of places in Shropshire with which he was very familiar, and legends then current in England, as well as souvenirs of chansons ae geste with which he had become acquainted on the Continent. At the very outset, for example, he borrows, from a local tradition, the legend of Payn Peverel, "le fier et hardy cosyn le roi," who happily delivered the country from the