Nearly two decades ago, four historians (Lloyd Bonfield, Richard Wall, Larry Poos and Robert Lee) met with officials of the Cambridge University Press to attempt to persuade them that the profession, and the Cambridge University Press, urgently required a new journal of demographic, social and legal history. This was no mean task, for our plea occurred some years before the veritable boom in journal-building that has marked the closing years of the last millennium. The risk was taken; the proposal was approved by the Syndics; and Continuity and Change was spawned.