NG-FU 52
From the original in the British Museum

IV MADAME EGLENTYNE AT HOME 53
From _MS. Add. 39843_. British Museum

V THE MENAGIER'S WIFE HAS A GARDEN PARTY 116
From _Harl. MS. 4425_. British Museum

VI THE MENAGIER'S WIFE COOKS HIS SUPPER WITH 117
THE AID OF HIS BOOK
From _MS. Royal, 15 D. i_. British Museum

VII CALAIS ABOUT THE TIME OF THOMAS BETSON 148
From _Cott. MS. Aug. i, Vol. II_. British Museum

VIII THOMAS PAYCOCKE'S HOUSE AT COGGESHALL 149
From _The Paycockes of Coggeshall_ by Eileen Power
(Methuen & Co. Ltd.)

A MAP OF THE JOURNEYS OF THE POLOS 68-9

Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us....

There be of them that have left a name behind them, that their praises
might be reported.

And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished, as though
they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born;
and their children after them.

But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been
forgotten.

With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance, and their
children are within the covenant.

Their seed standeth fast, and their children for their sakes.

Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall not be blotted
out.

Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.

ECCLESIASTICUS xliv.

CHAPTER I

_The Precursors_

I. ROME IN DECLINE

Every schoolboy knows that the Middle Ages arose on the ruins of the
Roman Empire. The decline of Rome preceded and in some ways prepared the
rise of the kingdoms and cultures which composed the medieval system.
Yet in spite of the self-evident truth of this historical preposition we
know little about life and thought in the watershed years when Europe
was ceasing to be Roman but was not yet medieval. We do not know how it
felt to watch the decline of Rome; we do not even know whether the men
who watched it knew what they saw, though we can be quite certain that
none of them foretold, indeed could have foreseen, the shape which the
world was to take in later centuries.

Yet the tragic story, its main themes and protagonists were for all to
see. No observer should have failed to notice that the Roman Empire of
the fourth and fifth centuries was no longer the Roman Empire of the
great Antonine and Augustan age; that it had lost its hold over its
territories and its eco