Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Works of G. P. R James, Esq., Vol. 2: Revised Corrected by the Author; With an Introductory Preface; Mary of Burgundy
I trust that the public will continue as kind; and in order to merit as far as possible its favour in this respect, I shall proceed to make a fair confession of the principal deviations from fact of which I have been guilty. Amongst the personages which appear upon the scene, there is a group which naturally detaches itself from the rest, and stands forth somewhat too evidently perhaps as formed of creatures of imagination. The old Lord of Hannut, his fair niece Alice, the Vert Gallant of Hannut, and his Green Riders, are all more or less of this class. Not, indeed, that I mean to say no such person as the Vert Gallant ever existed, for the whole of that part of the country, more especially on the side of the Ardennes, is full of traditions respecting him and his followers, which must have had some foun dation in fact. For centuries, the frontiers of France and those small feudal sovereignties now consolidated in the Belgian kingdom were infested by innumerable bands of free companions, many of which obtained a very unenviable reputation. N ot so, however, with the Green Riders, who seem to have been friendly to the peasantry and the lower classes, and to have won a degree of reverence and attachment from them remembered even to the present day. Thus, where the Yorkshire inn displays the sign of the Robin Hood, and the tale circulates of the bold outlaw and his forest companions, on the limits of France and Belgium, appears the sign of the Vert Gallant, and many a legend is related of his exploits in times past.
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