There are few studies of English society in the later middle ages to match the impressive array of scholarship for the period between the Reformation and the Civil War. Of course historians working on the age of Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are far more constrained by their sources than colleagues writing on Shakespearian England. Yet, while the dearth of personal and unofficial sorts of evidence is to be lamented, relevant documentation is by no means lacking. In fact, even in the study of a relatively small region the copiousness of the source material is often formidable. In addition to the magnificent series of records produced by the chancery, the exchequer and the law courts at Westminster, there are classes of record specific to particular localities. With regard to the Northwest there are the archives of the palatinates of Chester and Lancaster, the diocesan material at Lichfield, and the muniment collections of local gentry. Demonstrably, to work unaided through more than a fraction of this evidence would take a life-time. Fortunately in the past hundred years or so much learned effort has been expended in cataloguing, sorting and abstracting the more important material. The achievement of the Public Record Office and numerous record societies in calendaring and publishing material from the later middle ages has been impressive.