The rural society with which this spirited book is concerned is the county of Norfolk in a period, 1815 to 1914, when the clergy occupied a central, but changing place in village life. Its concern with the relationship between the Anglican clergy and the communities that they aspired to serve is the main concern of the book, but it is relations with the poor that form its central theme. Yet despite the focus on the clergy of the Church of England, the book is, in accordance with the aim of the series of which it is a part (Studies in Modern British Religion), not simply a piece of church history.

Attendance at, and the frequency of church services, conventional measures of the success of the Church of England, do not figure largely in its pages, and although the residence or non-residence of clergymen is seen as important, this is primarily in terms of the way that it impinged on the social relations rather than as a means of understanding the effectiveness of the Church's ministrations. Social relations in the 664 parishes that lie at the heart of this book are characterised as being marked by tensions, and the ways that the poor were encountered, and then managed in them, provide the principal themes of its two parts. Yet even this articulation of the transactions of rural life, along the axis of relations between the parson and the poor, still makes it far from easy to provide a general framework through which the working of rural society can be understood.

Keith Wrightson's characterisation of the parish as ‘a tangled, messy skein of overlapping and intersecting social networks’ is quoted in the Conclusion as being as applicable to the rural parishes of Norfolk as it is to those of early modern England with which Wrightson was concerned. Dr Lee suggests that there was a ‘metaphysical layer’ to the transactions of parish life in which ‘revolutionary change was being balanced against . . . the appeal of the unchanging past’, but this is a brave attempt to provide a conceptual framework for which his work is not yet ready, and its great strength lies in the argument of its individual chapters.

The introduction and conclusion that are provided to each of the chapters emphasise their importance as studies on particular themes that could almost stand in their own right as significant contributions to our understanding of the development of rural society in the period. Tithes and the ‘Swing’ disturbances, church restoration and religious and political radicalism are considered alongside the poor law, law and order, and education. It is an approach that fits well the complexity of parish life and yields significant insights.

The statement at the conclusion of the chapter ‘Tithes and Swing’ that attendance at worship as measured by the 1851 Religious Census was related to the tithe disputes of nearly twenty years earlier is an example of the way that the author can sometimes draw conclusions that do not seem to be sustained by the evidence that he has deployed. Nonetheless, it points up the strength of his work when he is able to move along the grain of parish life in an analysis of the complex empirical evidence through which the significance of its varied transactions, and their importance for an understanding of the processes of historical change, can be understood.