This book began with a belief, shared by all of us, that the charter collections of the early middle ages provide an exceptionally rich source of information for writing the social history of early medieval Europe – a source that has often been neglected. We also shared a belief that detailed study of particular localities is not well made in isolation – the East can illuminate the West, and even the North the South – and we thought it important to over-ride the sometimes excessively insular interests and approaches of English scholarship. The incomparable chance that charters give us to localize and particularize, and even to discuss the less than royal individual, could not be an excuse to ignore broad trends and common problems, for we shared an interest too in understanding the way that human communities organize themselves, as much now as in the distant past.

These shared beliefs have stood firm through some years of interaction, so much so that it seemed useful as well as manageable to produce a work concentrating on charters that record dispute settlements: these have allowed us to explore a class of the material with obvious potential for providing case material, a class whose subject matter is immediate to such central issues in the pattern of social, political and cultural change as definition of communal identity, the ebb and flow of state power, and the interaction between state and local community. We have worked on it in a genuinely collaborative way, meeting on many occasions during the last six years for long weekends of concentrated charter talk in rural isolation.