THE articles comprehended in the present volumes were written at very long intervals of time, some half a century ago, and printed in the Transactions of various Societies in different and distant counties. Many also appeared in the Builder newspaper. Each paper was intended to be complete in itself, and was written with no expectation that they would ever be collected and reprinted as one work. This I mention to account for, and I hope in some degree to excuse, the occasioned iteration of certain views concerning the connexion between the banks and earthworks, the moated mounds of the ninth century, and the buildings in masonry afterwards placed upon them,—which the Author was the first to set forth, and which are explained at length in the Introduction.

The latter and greater part of the work is occupied by minute, and, it is hoped, generally accurate accounts of most of the principal castles of England, and of one or two of a typical character in France and Scotland. The account of Caerphilly was drawn up in 1834. It was, I believe, the first attempt to treat, in a scientific and accurate manner, the plans and details of a great mediÆval fortress.

My cordial thanks are due to the editors of the various ArchÆological Journals in which the original papers appeared, and especially to the late editor of the Builder, Mr. Godwin. I have also especially to thank an old friend and school-fellow, Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street, for leave to reprint the paper on the Tower of London, and for the use of the woodcuts with which he so liberally embellished the original in his “Old London.”

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.