"It should be emphasized that these chapters are concerned both with those who went to England for a temporary sojourn and those who returned and stayed. The former is unquestionably a much larger group, and probably of greater interest to the American reader, because of continued membership in the colonial commonwealth. The latter element should not be slighted, however; in tracing its activities we gain some inkling of what was wrong or unattractive in the American society of the age, and a virtually unwritten saga of American careers in the Britain of the Old Empire is unfolded. Moreover, though some colonial Americans appear in the unsympathetic garb of expatriates and absentee landlords, with little or no interest in the problems of the rude provinces, there were many of those who stayed abroad who were probably more useful to their colonial compatriots there than they would have been in America. The motives which sent so many Americans abroad before the Revolution, and their activities and attitudes once they reached British soil are the main themes of this book. The matter of influences -- the effect of the American on a British polity and society, the impact of the Old World ways on the visitor and, through him, on the colonials to whom he usually returned -- is more incidentally treated"--Prologue.