In England, as in France and Germany, the main characteristics of the last fifty years, from the point of view of the student of history, has been that new material has been accumulating much faster than it can be assimilated or absorbed. When the first edition of this volume was sent to the press in 1910, I had the privilege of finding three good friends, who each revised one section of its content. The first was T. Rice Holmes, who looked over the prehistoric and early Celtic chapters. The second is Francis Haverfield, the greatest specialist in his day for all that concerned Roman Britain. The third, H. Carless Davis, then a fellow of All Souls and afterwards Regius Professor of Modern History.

After turning over tens of thousands of leaves in Latin, French, Italian, German, English, Spanish and Dutch print, one is left with an accumulation of observed phenomena - religious, cultural, literary, psychological - which the mind is forced to coordinate into some sort of general conclusions. As the author has stated in some of the pages which follow this preface, The author was profoundly averse to formulating 'philosophies of history', and though he felt impelled to put in order the impression whihc much reading and pondering have left with him, the author did not pretend to link these impressions into any theory of evolution. There are as many 'ifs' in history as 'therefores'. The phenomena are always interesting, often contradictory, like the strands of thought and behaviour in an individual human being. The author sets down his conclusions for what they are worth - though perhaps, as the Preacher remarks, 'of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh'. But the sixteenth century was a wonderful time.

In England, as in France and Germany, the main characteristics of the last fifty years, from the point of view of the student of history, has been that new material has been accumulating much faster than it can be assimilated or absorbed. When the first edition of this volume was sent to the press in 1910, I had the privilege of finding three good friends, who each revised one section of its content. The first was T. Rice Holmes, who looked over the prehistoric and early Celtic chapters. The second is Francis Haverfield, the greatest specialist in his day for all that concerned Roman Britain. The third, H. Carless Davis, then a fellow of All Souls and afterwards Regius Professor of Modern History.

Often some one precious detail of war lurks in the middle of a book of the most unlikely description. After turning over tens of thousands of leaves in Latin, French, Italian, German, English, Spanish and Dutch print, one is left with an accumulation of observed phenomena - religious, cultural, literary, psychological - which the mind is forced to coordinate into some sort of general conclusions. As the author has stated in some of the pages which follow this preface, the author is profoundly averse to formulating 'philosophies of history', and though the author feels impelled to put in order the impression which much reading and pondering have left with me, the author does not pretend to link these impressions into any theory of evolution. There are as many 'ifs' in history as 'therefores'.