As we shall from time to time have occasion to refer to Maundevile’s book, we may, on this first mention of it, very advantageously introduce some few details respecting it. The “Voiage and Travaile” of Sir John Maundevile was professedly a book for the guidance of pilgrims and travellers journeying to Jerusalem, but on the same principle that it has been asserted that all roads lead to Rome so all seemed to have centred in the capital of Judæa; hence his book is comprehensive enough to include the “Marvayles of Inde,” and a very full description of China. The book was one of the most popular works of the Middle Ages, and passed through many editions both in England and on the continent,[4] first in manuscript form and afterwards as a printed book. Of no book, with the exception of the Scriptures, can more MSS. be found of the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century. Nineteen manuscript copies of it, four being in Latin and nine in French, are in the library of the British Museum, and others at Oxford, Cambridge, and in various other libraries. In one of the copies in the British Museum, a small vellum folio of the fourteenth century, its _raison d’être_ is thus defined—“Here bygynneth the book of John Maundevile, Knyght of Inglelond, that was y-bore in the toun of Seynt Albons, and travelide aboute in the worlde in manye diverse countreis to se mervailes and customes of countreis and diversiteis of folkys and diverse shap of men and of beistis, and all the mervaill that he say he wrot and tellitte in this book.” The book is made up from his personal experiences, supplemented by gossip and hearsay, while at times he appropriated freely from the works of other authors. Much of what he tells of China and India is markedly similar, for instance, to the narrative of Friar Odoric, the narration of whose travels in those lands was given to the world in the year 1331. When Maundevile has an exceptionally improbable story to narrate he evades personal responsibility by prefacing it with the formula, “thei seyn.” He set out on his travels on Michaelmas day in 1322, and was absent from England for thirty-four years, being “ravished with a mightie desire to see the greater part of the world,” and in that lengthened period of absence going far towards the attainment of his ideal.