PREFACE.

NEW periods of English history, from the age of the First great Edward to the age of Queen Victoria, are replete with events more interesting in themselves, and more important in their results on our destinies as a nation, than that which witnessed the battles of Cressy and Poictiers. In the following pages I have endeavoured to do something towards popularising the history of the fourteenth century, by giving an account of the royal and noble ladies who then flourished-influencing the warriors whose exploits have been celebrated by Froissart, and whose pedigrees have been illustrated by Dugdale. In doing so, I have quoted freely from the famous chronicler, who wrote, as he tells us, that the honourable enterprises, noble adventures, and deeds of armies performed in the wars between England and France, might be properly related, and held in perpetual remembrance-to the end that the brave, taking example from them, might be encouraged in

their well-doing;' and I have so framed my narrative as to give some idea, not only of the battles and sieges with which the heroines of Froissart were associated, but of the dress, manners, and style of conversation which prevailed at the period when Edward III. and his son, the Black Prince, won the victories that made Englishmen, for a time, almost masters of France.

I cannot under the circumstances venture, like the old chronicler from whose pages I have SO largely quoted, to expect that all those who shall read may derive pleasure and instruction from my work, and that I may fall into their good graces;' but I would fain hope that my sketches may not be altogether uninteresting to English readers as relating to the heroines of European history at that era of English chivalry-marked and rendered memorable by the institution of the order of the Garter.

J. G. E.