The opening of Preface
This attempt to sketch the history of England under the Angevin kings owes its existence to the master whose name I have ventured to place at its beginning. It was undertaken at his suggestion; its progress through those earliest stages which for an inexperienced writer are the hardest of all was directed by his counsels, aided by his criticisms, encouraged by his sympathy; and every step in my work during the past eleven years has but led me to feel more deeply and to prize more highly the constant help of his teaching and his example. Of the book in its finished state he never saw a page. For its faults no one is answerable but myself. I can only hope that, however great may be its errors and its defects, it may yet shew at least some traces of that influence which is so abidingly precious to me.