We are grateful to our colleague Judith Green for reminding us of the hostage to fortune that Jenny Wormald left buried in the acknowledgements to her book Lords and Men in Scotland: Bonds of Manrent, 1442‒1603 (Edinburgh, 1985). By remarking on the coincidence that the earliest known bond of manrent was dated exactly 500 years before her own date of birth, Jenny had enabled scholars of 2011 to work out that her seventieth birthday was approaching. The result was a conference in 2012 celebrating her achievements – a conference in which Jenny participated with éclat, being one of the last to leave the restaurant, with her sons, at the end of a long and enjoyable day.

It was always intended that the conference would be a first step towards an edited volume, and this book is the result. We are grateful to all those who spoke at the conference; mention should be made here of Steven Gunn, whose paper was promised for publication elsewhere but was much appreciated on the day. Revised versions of the other conference papers appear below, along with a number of other chapters that all address themes prominent in Jenny's work. Thanks are due to the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, and to the conference administrator, Adrienne Miller.

Edinburgh University Press expressed early interest in the project and has been a consistently supportive publisher.