This new edition differs from the first in various respects. First, a new chapter entitled Justice and Jurisdiction has been added. This fills a gap in the First Edition, for in 1965 I felt that on this topic there was little to be added to what others had done. I hope also that it will fill a gap in much that has been written in the last twenty years or so about the legal history of England in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, for it is concerned with barons as litigants, not as holders of courts. Secondly, I have added some new appendices. Some of these deal with completely new evidence or with problems which have emerged since 1965; some are concerned with difficult and debatable matters best discussed outside the main body of the book. I have not tried to discuss all current debates in this way. On the ‘price revolution’, ‘heritability’, and a few similar matters I have simply directed the reader to a reasonable sample of the work of the participants and referred to Holt (1991a) where I discuss them briefly, but more directly. Thirdly, I have revised the text throughout, adjusting it here and there to recent work and adding a few short sections which reflect my own fresh thinking or research. The references in the footnotes have been brought up to date; I hope that I have included all the relevant work which has been done in the last quarter of a century. Finally, the book is provided with a completely new and more comprehensive index.

At the same time I have tried to reduce changes to the minimum, for this, like any other book, is a product of time and place. At one stage I intended to include a clause-by-clause commentary, but it soon became apparent that this would require almost encyclopaedic bulk. Too much work has now been done on the later history of the Charter, on the Crown's feudal incidents, for example, to incorporate anything more than a passing reference.