A Source-Book of English Social History

These laws are dated A.D. 600, only three years after the coming of St. Augustine. Throughout them and the later dooms the educative effect of Christianity in its Roman form is...

An example of full rights of self-government, the city electing its own Mayor and other officers. Citizens are entitled to attend the moot, but are already becoming a close olig...

Chief interest social; illustrates origins of centres of civilisation in Saxon England; foundations of abbey laid in same way as those of Glastonbury British Lake village c. 300...

About this time also, Pope Innocent the Fourth sent Friar Ascelline, being one of the order of the Praedicants, together with three other Friars ... with letters apostolical unt...

The Mongols or Tartars, in outward shape, are unlike to all other people. For they are broader between the eyes, and the balls of their cheeks, than men of other nations be. The...

But the Mongols ... prepared themselves to battle against the Kythayans [men of Cathay or China].... This is the first time, when the Emperor of the Kythayans being vanquished,...

Then they put us to our choice whether we would have carts and oxen, or pack horses to transport our carriages [i.e., luggage]. And the merchants of Constantinople advised me no...

They have in no place any settled city to abide in.... For in the winter they descend into the warm regions southward. And in the summer they ascend into the cold regions northw...

Some days we had change of horses twice or thrice in a day. Sometimes we travelled two or three days together, not finding any people, and then we were constrained not to ride s...

Of hunger and thirst, cold and weariness there was no end. For they gave us no victuals but only in the evening. In the morning they used to give us a little drink, or some sodd...

They begin to write at the top of their paper drawing their lines right down: and so they read and multiply their lines from the left hand to the right.... They burn their dead,...

Beyond Muc is Great Cathaya, the inhabitants whereof (as I suppose) were of old time called Seres. For from them are brought most excellent stuffs of silk. And this people is ca...

Compare list of Saxon mints under Athelstane with this account of the King’s mint, in the eighteenth century. The history of coinage is illustrated by notes of clipping; repeate...

This is here shown to be a sport, a trial of skill in which groups of knights encounter. The more serious ordeal by battle or tournament is a duel often to the death and so the...

These accounts were written by Columbus himself, and may be amplified very much by reference to the originals in the Hakluyt Society’s volume. Another account of the fourth voya...

Stow’s account of the Steelyard and the work of the Easterlings, is valuable for the history of trade. It exhibits the alien as the great importer, practically monopolizing the...

Military, religious and constitutional questions are not suitable for children, and are only touched here in Defoe’s racy, if partisan, summary. The close of the first extract g...