See, there are the square-shouldered Tudors; there are the steel glints of Plantagenet armour; the Eastern-robed followers of Cœur de Lion; the swaggering beribboned Royalists; the ruffs, trunks, and doublets of Elizabethans; the snuffy, wide-skirted coats swaying about Queen Anne. There are the soft, swathed Norman ladies with bound-up chins; the tapestry figures of ladies proclaiming Agincourt; the dignified dames about Elizabeth of York; the playmates of Katherine Howard; the wheels of round farthingales and the high lace collars of King James’s Court; the beauties, bare-breasted, of Lely; the Hogarthian women in close caps. And, in front of us, two posturing figures in Dresden china colours, rouged, patched, powdered, perfumed, in hoop skirts, flirting with a fan—the lady; in gold-laced wide coat, solitaire, bagwig, ruffles, and red heels—the gentleman. ‘I protest, madam,’ he is saying, ‘but you flatter me vastly.’ ‘La, sir,’ she replies, ‘I am prodigiously truthful.’
‘And how are we to know that all this is true?’ the critics ask, guarding the interest of the public. ‘We see that your book is full of statements, and there are no, or few, authorities given for your studies. Where,’ they ask, ‘are the venerable anecdotes which are given a place in every respectable work on your subject?’
To appease the appetites which are always hungry for skeletons, I give a short list of those books which have proved most useful:
MS. Cotton, Claudius, B. iv.
MS. Harl., 603. Psalter, English, eleventh century.
The Bayeaux Tapestry.
MS. Cotton, Tiberius, C. vi. Psalter.
MS. Trin. Coll., Camb., R. 17, 1. Illustrated by Eadwine, a monk, 1130-1174.
MS. Harl. Roll, Y. vi.
MS. Harl., 5102.