This book is a revised version of my 1978 Oxford D.Phil, dissertation. Neither the thesis nor the book could have been brought to fruition without the generous financial support over many years of the Canada Council, the Quebec Ministry of Education and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation; nor without the invaluable moral support of the Joshua Lipschitz Society. For the privilege of pursuing my studies in Oxford I owe an especial debt of gratitude to the Warden and Fellows of New College.

The librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library, always of unfailing assistance, made my researches there a pleasure. I received much help, too, from the staffs of the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Archives Nationales de France. If not for Mlle M. Langlois, M. H. Martin and Mme J. Metman of the latter institution, I should have wasted much more time than I did in working my way through the registers of the Parlement of Paris and the royal chancery. Unnamed for obvious reasons but not unappreciated is the prèsident de la salle at the Archives Nationales who bent a few rules and allowed me to work in the stacks. I should also like to thank J. P. Brooke-Little, Richmond Herald, for kindly giving me permission to consult Arundel MS 48 at the College of Arms.

It is a pleasure finally to record my gratitude to the many scholars and teachers who have all contributed in some way to this book: C. C. Bayley, R. Vogel, R. Klibansky, M. P. Maxwell and especially P. V. Tomaszuk of McGill University; Ph. Contamine of the Université de Paris X (Nanterre); the late W. F. Church of Brown University; P. S. Lewis of All Souls College, who supervised an earlier and much shorter version of this work; M. H. Keen of Balliol College; and M. G. A. Vale of St John's College, who examined me for both the B.Phil. (M.Phil.) and D.Phil, degrees, and whose incisive criticism helped me avoid many errors.