OF THE RIVAL HOUSES OF YORK AND LANCASTER, HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL: EMBRACING A PERIOD OF ENGLISH HISTORY FROM THE ACCESSION OF RICHARD II. TO THE DEATH OF HENRY VII. BY EMMA ROBERTS... IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR HARDING AND LEPARD, PALL MALL EAST; AND G. B. WHITTAKER, AVE-MARIA LANE. PREFACE. Ir is with much diffidence that a pen so untried offers its first attempt in historical composition to the public eye. Attracted by the grandeur of the subject, and strongly induced to enter a field comparatively neglected by former writers, the author has perhaps trusted too securely to the interest attached to the period which she has endeavoured to illustrate, and ventured upon a theme which required higher and more varied powers. Amid the mass of materials to be found in the library of the British Museum, the author had to choose those which would be generally acceptable to the reading portion of the community: and her object has been to unite amusement with information, to divest antiquarianism of its dryness, and to give life and motion to the picture of other days, by the animated narrations of contemporary historians. Entering upon her task unknown and unassisted, the author has to regret that her work was very far advanced before she became acquainted with those gentlemen to whose kindness in pointing out sources of information she is, notwithstanding so great a disadvantage, deeply indebted. To E. A. Kendall, Esq. who supplied the whole of the account of Sir Richard Whittington, she begs to offer her most grateful acknowledgments. From N. H. Nicolas, Esq. though unable to avail herself from the cause already stated of the facilities offered by his extensive researches, she has obtained many important facts; and she eagerly seizes the present opportunity to express, however briefly, her deep sense of the untiring kindness of Dr. Meyrick, whose friendly zeal in her service is sufficiently evinced by the continual recurrence of his name in her pages, as the source whence information equally valuable and interesting has been derived. To Dr. Meyrick's high reputation the author's panegyric can add nothing, but she feels infinite pleasure in offering the weak tribute of her thanks for the numberless instances of kindness which she has, in common with all those |