would not have engaged in it but for the solicitation of a man who was the flower of chivalry and courtesy, and whom, at the conclusion of her work, she has called Earl William.
Por amor le conte Guilliaume,
Le plus vaillant de cest royaume,
Mentremis de cest livre faire,
Et de l'Anglois en Romans traire, &c.[1]
Monsieur le Grand, in his preface to some of Mary's fables which he has published in French prose, informs us that this person was Earl William de Dampierre[2]; but he mould have given some authority for this opinion, for want of which we must treat it as a mere conjecture. If, on the one hand, there seems to be little that he could have urged in its defence, it is by no means difficult on the other to find reasons to confute it.
William, lord of Dampierre in Champagne, had in himself no right whatever to the title of Earl. During the 13th century this dignity was by no means assumed indiscriminately and at pleasure by French gentlemen; it was generally borne by whoever was the owner of a province, and sometimes of a great city, constituting an earldom; such were the earldoms of Flanders, of Artois, of Anjou, of Paris, &c. It was then that these great vassals of the crown had a claim to the title of Earl, and accordingly assumed it[3]. Now the territory of Dampierre was not in this predicament during the 13th century; it was only a simple lordship belonging to the lords of that name[4].
It is true, indeed, that William de Dampierre married, after the year 1223, Margaret of Flanders; but she did not bring him the
