We still praise famous men, for he would be a poor historian who could spare one of the great figures who have shed glory or romance upon the page of history; but we praise them with due recognition of the fact that not only great individuals, but people as a whole, unnamed and undistinguished masses of people, now sleeping in unknown graves, have also been concerned in the story.

Our fathers that begat us have come to their own at last.

As Acton put it, 'The great historian now takes his meals in the kitchen.' This book is chiefly concerned with the kitchens of History, and the first which we shall visit is a country estate at the beginning of the ninth century.

It so happens that we know a surprising amount about such an estate, partly because Charlemagne himself issued a set of orders instructing the Royal stewards how to manage his own lands, telling them everything it was necessary for them to know, down to the vegetables which they were to plant in the garden.

But our chief source of knowledge is a wonderful estate book which Irminon, the Abbot of St Germain des Pres near Paris, drew up so that the abbey might know exactly what lands belonged to it and who lived on those lands, very much as William I drew up an estate book of his whole kingdom and called it _Domesday Book_.