THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
Because amongst others mine authors, I have oftentimes alleged Fitz-Stephens as one more choice than other, namely, for the ancient estate of this city, more than four hundred years since: and also the said author being rare, I have in this place thought good by impression to impart the same to my loving friends, the learned antiquaries, as the author wrote it in the Latin tongue; and first to note in effect what Master Bale, in commendation of the said author, writeth:
"William Stephanides, or Fitzstephen, a monk of Canterbury, born of worshipful parents in the city of London, well brought up at the first under good masters, did more and more increase in honest conditions and learning; for ever in his young years there appeared in him a certain light of a gentleman-like disposition, which promised many good things, afterwards by him performed. Such time as other spent in brawls and idle talk, he employed in wholesome exercises for the honour of his country, following therein the example of Plato, and was very studious both in humanity and divinity."
The city of London, his birth-place, the most noble of all other cities of this land, and the prince's seat, situated in the south part of this island, he loved above all the other, so that at length he wrote most elegantly in Latin of the site and rights of the same. Leland, in divers of his books, commendeth him for an excellent writer. He lived in the reign of King Stephen, wrote in the reign of Henry II, and deceased in the year of Christ 1191, in the reign of Richard I.
A
