This volume of essays marks the culmination of a project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and supported by the University of York and the National Archives, to create a comprehensive catalogue of the contents of the series ‘Ancient Petitions’ (SC 8), to publish this through the National Archives’ on-line Catalogue, and to make available digitised images of the documents in the series through the National Archives’ special electronic delivery service, DocumentsOnline. I should like to thank current and former staff members of the National Archives, particularly Emma Allen, David Crook, Chris Kutler, Chris Owens and Paul Stembridge, for their unflagging commitment and enthusiasm to this project, and Jillian Mustard and other staff at the Arts and Humanities Research Council for timely support and courteous advice. I am profoundly grateful to Gwilym Dodd, the co-director of the project; to Chris Given-Wilson, Anthony Musson, Tony Pollard, Sarah Rees Jones, Chris Webb and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne for their work on the Advisory Board; and to the Department of History and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, for assistance in accommodating and managing the project. Anthony Musson and I organised the two conferences from which these proceedings spring, and we thank the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, and the National Archives for hosting these successful events. I join my co-editors in expressing particular thanks to Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, the general editor of York Medieval Press, and to Caroline Palmer of Boydell & Brewer, for their enthusiastic leadership. The success of the ‘Medieval Petitions’ project owed most to its highly talented research assistants, and I am delighted to place on record my thanks to Brian Barker and Andrew Barrell, and my special debt of gratitude to Simon Harris, Lisa Liddy, Jonathan Mackman and Shelagh Sneddon, for their skills, scholarship and sociability.

Where translations of original texts are used, we have generally also supplied the original. In a few cases, where the originals are readily available in print and/or on-line, we have exercised discretion and omitted them. Texts edited in extenso as appendices are not translated.