I am aware that there are incidents which may strike the modern
reader as brutal and repellent. It is useless, however, to draw
the Twentieth Century and label it the Fourteenth. It was a
sterner age, and men's code of morality, especially in matters of
cruelty, was very different. There is no incident in the text for
which very good warrant may not be given. The fantastic graces of
Chivalry lay upon the surface of life, but beneath it was a
half-savage population, fierce and animal, with little ruth or
mercy. It was a raw, rude England, full of elemental passions,
and redeemed only by elemental virtues. Such I have tried to draw it.

For good or bad, many books have gone to the building of this one.
I look round my study table and I survey those which lie with me
at the moment, before I happily disperse them forever. I see La
Croix's "Middle Ages," Oman's "Art of War," Rietstap's "Armorial
General," De la Borderie's "Histoire de Bretagne," Dame Berner's
"Boke of St. Albans," "The Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brokeland,"
"The Old Road," Hewitt's "Ancient Armour," Coussan's "Heraldry,"
Boutell's "Arms," Browne's "Chaucer's England," Cust's "Scenes of
the Middle Ages," Husserand's "Wayfaring Life," Ward's "Canterbury
Pilgrims;" Cornish's "Chivalry," Hastings' "British Archer,"
Strutt's "Sports," Johnes Froissart, Hargrove's "Archery,"
Longman's "Edward III," Wright's "Domestic Manners." With these
and many others I have lived for months. If I have been unable to
combine and transfer their effect, the fault is mine.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

"UNDERSHAW," November 30, 1905.