By the thirteenth century the English Church had a highly developed bureaucratic machinery. Those at its pinnacle, the archbishops and bishops, have been well served by modern scholarship – aided by the impressive collections of their acta undertaken by the ongoing English Episcopal Acta series and by editions of episcopal registers, for which we must thank the Canterbury and York Society and numerous local history record series. Michael Burger's study considers instead those men at the bedrock of episcopal administration in thirteenth-century England, the clerks and administrators who served their bishops and carried out their wishes. Though many of these individuals must have gone unrecorded, an impressive number emerge from this painstaking research. There are two main themes of this book, suggested by the subtitle: reward and punishment. Burger argues that for most bishops the carrot of reward was more important and more often deployed than the stick of punishment, and the main reward was the benefice. The benefice could be seen as a guarantee of independence. It might bring regular income, status and security, and so more than amply recompense a period of devoted service – such expectation providing an impetus for a clerk to remain hardworking, steadfast and loyal. But this brought, or might bring, its problems and ambiguities in the relationship between bishop and administrator. If a clerk achieved the prize of a benefice, what incentive remained for continued service? Might a successful clerk cease to serve his bishop? Or move to another? Or give up his clerical career? Deploying evidence from across the English dioceses Burger addresses these and other questions. If the tenure of a benefice was wholly secure, what methods could a bishop resort to in order to reverse the reward? What happened if he ran out of benefices? What other forms of reward were available to him? If a clerk failed in his duties how might he be punished? What were the consequences of the episcopal use of benefices as reward? And how far was there continuity of service from one bishop to his successor? These issues are explored with clarity and close reference to a wide range of sources.