As the authors of the first volume wrote of it in 1972, this book has been long in the making. Soon after the publication of the 940–1216 volume, Miss Vera London went on to make notes from printed sources for a second volume continuing the lists up to 1377. This work progressed slowly but surely, when periodic access to Cambridge University Library allowed, on her regular visits from Shropshire. In 1985, following discussions with Professor Christopher Brooke, I became involved in the project with the prime responsibility for checking through the manuscript sources. The activity has continued from then until the present time. With such collecting work there is always the temptation not to finish – there is always just another cache of documents to check, just another plea roll to consult – but it is in the nature of such fasti lists that they can never attain to anything approaching completeness. To search systematically through the hundreds of unpublished plea rolls for the period is beyond one individual's efforts and one can only aim to improve on existing lists and provide a good basis for lists not produced before. That we have achieved such a limited aim is in no small part due to the unstinting help generously given by friends and colleagues over these fifteen years.