TO
CANON GREENWELL, D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A.
AND THE
REVEREND C. PLUMMER
I wish to associate the following volumes with the names of two friends, for whose gifts I have a special regard. Both of them have added greatly to our knowledge of early English history, and both of them have had the untiring zeal, modesty, and patience of the ideal scholar. Canon Green- well of Durham, whose venerable age seems unassailable by time or human frailty, will live for ever in the memory of the archaeologist, and most notably among those disciples of "Old Mortality" who have explored and expounded the grave mounds of our ancestors. His name will live still longer among the disciples of Izaak Walton, as a hero among fishermen and as the inventor of "Greenwell's Glory," the most famous of trout flies. My other friend, Mr. C. Plummer, has given us the definite and ideal edition of the two corner-stones of our earlier history, Bede's
