All the texts in this volume have been newly edited from manuscript sources, but the space available makes full critical editions inappropriate. One manuscript is selected to serve as a base text in each case and is emended where necessary, in the light of readings from one or two other manuscripts (or conjecturally in the case of a unique manuscript). Significant departures from the manuscript used as the basis of a text are signalled in the edited text by square brackets. Emendations are recorded in footnotes to the text, according to the following conventions: the reading adopted in the text is followed, after the square bracket, by the sigil of the manuscript from which the emendation has been adopted, then by the reading of the base manuscript (and then, in some cases, by the readings of other manuscripts consulted).

The texts edited for this volume have not been modernized except in the following details. Obsolete letter forms have been replaced by modern equivalents: thorn is represented as th; yogh is represented as gh or y (occasionally as final z). I/J, i/j, U/V and u/v have been normalized according to modern practice. Initial ff appears as F or f. All abbreviations and contractions have been silently expanded. Capitalization, word division, punctuation and paragraphing are editorial. Quotations in the notes from Middle English works in modern editions and from manuscripts follow the forms found there. ‘Alle maner of pinchers’ are referred to on p. 70 below.