events of the following history occurred.

Now, it has been the custom of the Caskodens for centuries to keep a
record of events, as they have happened, both private and public. Some
are in the form of diaries and journals like those of Pepys and
Evelyn; others in letters like the Pastons'; others again in verse and
song like Chaucer's and the Water Poet's; and still others in the
more pretentious form of memoir and chronicle. These records we always
have kept jealously within our family, thinking it vulgar, like the
Pastons, to submit our private affairs to public gaze.

There can, however, be no reason why those parts treating solely of
outside matters should be so carefully guarded, and I have determined
to choose for publication such portions as do not divulge family
secrets nor skeletons, and which really redound to family honor.

For this occasion I have selected from the memoir of my worthy
ancestor and namesake, Sir Edwin Caskoden--grandson of the goldsmith,
and Master of the Dance to Henry VIII--the story of Charles Brandon
and Mary Tudor, sister to the king.

This story is so well known to the student of English history that I
fear its repetition will lack that zest which attends the development
of an unforeseen denouement. But it is of so great interest, and is so
full, in its sweet, fierce manifestation, of the one thing insoluble
by time, Love, that I will nevertheless rewrite it from old Sir
Edwin's memoir. Not so much as an historical narrative, although I
fear a little history will creep in, despite me, but simply as a
picture of that olden long ago, which, try as we will to put aside the
hazy, many-folded curtain of time, still retains its shadowy lack of