An analysis of the role played by the Church of England's quest for a colonial bishop in early American political life, this study is a narrowly focused narrative history that enters little into the wider historiographic currents around this theme. James Bell is content to affirm that the movement for the colonial episcopate was a significant cause of the American Revolution. The arguments for and against colonial bishops between 1686 and 1776 are thoroughly rehearsed, but because the rival positions hardly changed throughout this period, Bell's argument moves chronologically rather than develops thematically. Bell tends to take at face value ‘Puritan’ assaults on episcopacy, and the theological dimension to understandings of episcopacy seldom informs his outline of rhetorical positions; he does not recognise, for example, the way that contemporary Anglican patristic scholarship informed the conversion of significant New England ministers to the Church of England. The study is richly informed by Bell's authoritative command of colonial clerical biography, but lacks a lay perspective, outside that of a few government officials. The chapters with biographical sketches of loyalist and patriot clergy and on the movements of clergy during the Revolution are informative and useful in themselves but do not advance the argument of the book, and because his work is focused only on the colonies that became the United States, Bell takes no account of the reciprocal impact of this same debate on Canadian and other histories. Within its chosen limits, however, this book adds significant detail to the chronological and textual narrative.