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Web Site Contents Copyright 2008-2009 by Tim L. Scott. U.S.A. All rights reserved. |
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Cadmon Druce novel Copyright 1992 by Tim L. Scott. U.S.A. All rights reserved. Limited permission is granted by the author to individual readers to make one non-commercial personal copy that is not made available for sale, resale, trade or reproduction, in whole or in part, in any medium.
Cadmon Druce by Tim Scott
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Dedication To the Scott Mesnie Jeanne, Nathaniel and Squire Horse
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Cadmon Druce novel Copyright 1992 by Tim L. Scott. U.S.A. All rights reserved. Limited permission is granted by the author to individual readers to make one non-commercial personal copy that is not made available for sale, resale, trade or reproduction, in whole or in part, in any medium. Or Read the On-Line Copy, Starting with the Next Panel URL: www.timlscott.com |
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There was never a time like the change of centuries from 1100 to 1200 A.D. It was England in the reign of the Plantagenets: Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart and his brother, John. The age also marked the pinnacle of knighthood, for though the pageantry increased in later centuries, the meaning and doing of knighthood was never greater. These times witnessed battlefield knightings based on personal merit, not on birth or lineage. Because of the practice of primogeniture, the inheritance of titles and wealth by eldest sons, younger sons of landed nobility were sent either to the church or to close relatives to learn the art of war. If fortune smiled, such a knight could earn rank and property by sheer personal effort, as did William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, long in the service of the Plantagenets. But somewhere in the early 1200s, this avenue closed, and knighthood became the private preserve of noble birth. By the year 1215, King John had lost most of England's continental holdings, including Normandy; he had taxed and alienated his barons; he had been forced to place his seal on the Magna Carta, a document meant to bring equity to the kingdom; he had subsequently ignored the tenets of the Magna Carta and provoked over half, and eventually two-thirds, of the barons to arms against him. So enraged were the rebel barons by John's excesses, that by the winter of 1215, they had offered England to Louis, son of Philip Augustus of France, their suzerain lord, if only he would land an army and take it. This, Louis was about to do. But, King John, the wrong man for the times, stubbornly would not yield. Despite his many faults, John was a tireless organizer, and with a third of England's nobility behind him, and in resolute command of his mercenary army, he began to turn the situation around. The barons recognized it was time to change tactics. If battle could not win the day, perhaps assassination could. To little villages hidden away in the Cotswold Mountains all this grand activity seemed little more than the words of a troubadour song -- until Cadmon Druce, a knight not seen since the Third Crusade, returned home.
End of Introduction (Go to Chapter 1)
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