Scott begins his novel with a historical sketch of England during the reign of Richard I, known as “Lion Heart” or “Coeur de Lion.” On his way home from leading the Third Crusade, Richard was taken captive by the Duke of Austria. With Richard gone, his brother John took charge of the country, hoping to seize the throne for himself. Meanwhile, the English nobles tyrannized their less powerful neighbors and their serfs. John’s Norman French partisans also exacerbated tensions between the ruling dynasty of the Plantagenets and the native Saxons, who had been removed from power a century earlier when the Norman Duke William conquered England at the Battle of Hastings.

Scott now turns to his story. Two men, both Saxons, are talking in an oak grove. It is nearly sunset. Gurth, the swineherd of the Saxon nobleman Cedric, is discussing the tensions between the Normans and Saxons with Cedric’s fool Wamba. As the men prepare to head home, they hear an approaching party of horsemen.

The horsemen noted by Gurth and Wamba are a group of Norman knights and ranking officials. They include the Templar knight