The essays within this volume, produced in honor of J. Ambrose Raftis, are united by two themes significant in Raftis's career: a belief in the fundamental individuality of medieval English men and women, and a belief in their ability to make choices. However much environment, custom, social structure, and even biology might constrain or otherwise affect personal behavior, the men and women who appear in the often laconic entries of medieval court rolls were distinctive, one-of-a-kind persons, and their actions-their deeds and their misdeeds, their triumphs and their failures, their fortunes and their follies-were often the result of choices they had made. That is the medieval world of J. Ambrose Raftis, and it is that world, and that vision, that this book honors.
