THE Story of Oxford touches the History of England, social and political, mental and architectural, at so many points, that it is impossible to deal with it fully even in so large a volume as the present.

Even as it is, I have been unavoidably compelled to save space by omitting much that I had written and practically all my references and acknowledgments. Yet, where one has gathered so much honey from other men’s flowers not to acknowledge the debt in detail appears discourteous and ungrateful; and not to give chapter and verse jars also upon the historical conscience. I can only say that, very gratefully, J’ai pris mon bien oÙ je l’ai trouvÉ, whether in the forty odd volumes of the Oxford Historical Society, the twenty volumes of the College Histories, the accurate and erudite monographs of Dr Rashdall (“MediÆval Universities”) and Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte (“History of the University of Oxford to the year 1530”) or innumerable other works. Where so much has been so well done by others in the way of dealing with periods and sections of my whole subject, my chief business has been to read, mark, digest, and then to arrange my story. But to do that thoroughly has been no light task. Whether it be well done or ill-done, the story now told has the great merit of providing an occasion, excuse was never needed, for the display of Mr Herbert Railton’s art.