This volume was inspired by the International Legal History Conference held at the University of Exeter 23-25 March 2000 on the theme ‘Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages'. This was the first of what is hoped will be a continuing series of such conferences based around a coherent, all-embracing theme with the aim of bringing together both lawyers and historians and of encouraging a suitable blend of established and younger scholars. The financial support afforded by the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society in this respect was most welcome.

While at first blush this appeared to be a fairly narrow area to explore, speakers and delegates alike brought interesting viewpoints on expectations of the law from an array of countries or regions ranging across a broad chronological span. A significant, subsidiary theme which arose during the conference (and has been addressed here in different ways by various contributors) was the role played by law (in its different guises) in the development of the medieval state. This was explored not simply in terms of the substantive content of the law and the respective legal institutions, but also with regard to the more subtle effect of influencing the ideological outlook of both rulers and the ruled. In addition to the focus on the law in England from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, comparisons were drawn with attitudes towards the law and perceptions of legal developments occurring in Scotland and among the Celtic lordships, in Brittany, France, Flanders, Holland, Sweden and Bohemia.

The papers in this volume expose the way these expectations are generated, captured, revealed or replayed for posterity. We can see this in the activity of charter writing (by the duke of Angevin Brittany and lords of Celtic Scotland), in the framing of definitions of ‘liberty', in jurisprudential reasonings, in the concern for historical justifications, in the phraseology of various forms of legislation and chancery bills, and in the active role played by rulers of European states in law-giving and in the organisation of legal institutions. For reasons of space and in order to present a coherent approach to the conference theme(s), the published contributions represent a distillation of the proceedings focusing on the most pertinent aspects of the debate. The book nevertheless offers a full contextualisation of law.