To Mr. Freeman my obligations are of a different and less personal character. Other historians have visited the scenes of events which they were about to describe, but no one has shown himself so familiar with the ancient divisions, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, of English ground, and with the buildings connected with them. His accomplishments as a topographer and as a master of mediæval architecture are peculiar to himself among historians, and materials which in their original form are dry and uninstructive give, in his hands, weight and substance to some of his most brilliant sketches. As a collector of some of these materials, I have often felt surprise and delight at the use to which they have been applied; and, although my work has been rather that of a quarryman or brickmaker, I am sometimes led almost to regard myself as sharing in the glory of the architect.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

CHAPTER.
I. [Introduction]
II. [Earthworks of the Post-Roman and English Periods]
III. [Of the Castles of England at the Conquest and under the Conqueror]
IV. [Of the Political Value of Castles under the Successors of the Conqueror]
V. [The Political Influence of Castles in the Reign of Henry II.]
VI. [The Castles of England and Wales at the latter part of the Twelfth Century]
VII. [The same subject continued]
VIII. [The same subject concluded]
IX. [The Rectangular Keep of a Norman Castle]
X. [Of the Shell Keep]
XI. [Castles of the early English Period]
XII. [Of the Edwardian or Concentric Castles]

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I.