The MS. from which the present poem is printed is in the Laudian collection in the Bodleian Library, where its old mark is K 60, and its present one Misc. 108. Being described in the old printed catalogue merely as _Vitæ Sanctorum_, the romance was in consequence for a long time overlooked. The Lives of the Saints occupy a large portion of the volume, and are probably to be ascribed to the authorship of Robert of Gloucester. “These Lives or Festivals,” says Sir F. Madden, “are [here] 61 in number, written in long Alexandrine verse. Then succeed the Sayings of St Bernard and the Visions of St Paul, both in six-line stanzas; the _Disputatio inter Corpus et Animam_, the English Romance of Havelok, the Romance of Kyng Horn, and some additions in a hand of the 15th century, including the lives of St Blaise, St Cecilia, and St Alexius, and an alliterative poem intitled _Somer Soneday_, making in all the Contents of the Volume to amount to 70 pieces.” The lays of Havelok and Horn are written out in the same handwriting, of an early date, certainly not later than the end of the thirteenth century. The Havelok begins on fol. 204, and is written in double columns, each column containing 45 lines. A folio is lost between fol. 211 and 212, but no notice of this has been taken in numbering the folios; hence the catchword which should have been found at the bottom of fol. 215 _b_, appears at the bottom of fol. 214 _b_ (see l. 2164). The poem terminates at the 27th line on fol. 219 _b_, and is immediately followed by Kyng Horn in the same column. The character of the handwriting is bold and square, but the words are very close together. The initial letter of every line is written a little way apart from the rest, as in William of Palerne, and other MSS. Both the long and short _s_ (ſ _and_ s) are used. The long _s_ is in general well distinguished from _f_, and on this account I have taken the liberty of printing both _esses_ alike, as my experience in printing the Romans of Partenay proved that the difficulty of avoiding misprints is greater than the gain of representing the difference between them. The chief point of interest is that, as in _early_ MSS., the long _s_ is sometimes found at the _end_ of a word, as in “uſ” in l. 22, and “iſ” in l. 23. The following are all the examples of the use of this letter in the first 26 lines; ſo (4), wicteſte (9), ſtede (10), criſt, ſchilde (16), Kriſt, ſo (17), ſo (19), ſchal (21), Kriſt, uſ (22), iſ (23), ſtalworþi (24), ſtalworþeſte (25), ſtede (26). With this exception, the present reprint is a faithful representation of the original; for, as the exact fidelity of a text is of the first importance, I have been careful to compare the proof-sheets with the MS. twice throughout; besides which, the original edition is itself exceedingly correct, and had been re-read by Sir F. Madden with the MS. His list of errata (nearly all of them of minor importance) agreed almost exactly with my own.