The appearance of Nigel Saul’s Lordship and Faith is timely. A surge of interest in parish church studies in England has manifested in recent long-term research projects (the Norwich Parish Churches project), conferences (for example, Harlaxton 2017, ‘Church and City in the Middle Ages’ and, in the same year, ‘Towards an Art History of the Parish Church’ at The Courtauld Institute of Art) and books (such as Sally Badham’s Seeking Salvation (Reference Badham2015) on commemoration in late medieval parish churches). Despite its focus on the knightly class, this book necessarily widens its mandate in order to adequately address the gentry’s involvement in the parish church. Lack of scholarly attention to the English parish church has been lamented for some time, and Saul’s book is a welcome addition to the landscape of parish church studies, which has long been dominated by broad, general surveys, or ones concerning only the later Middle Ages (such as the important contributions of Eamon Duffy, Clive Burgess and Katherine French).

Saul’s initial chapters approach his material chronologically. After the introductory chapter, Chapter 2, ‘Churching the Landscape’ (a reference to Richard Morris’ critical Reference Morris1989 book, Churches in the Landscape) shows evidence for minster churches, the proto-parish system whereby a group of priests stationed in a central location would travel to settlements to administer pastoral care. Saul couples his rundown of the familiar literature on the minster system with a look at the way contemporary gentry engaged with these systems and created field chapels on their land – convenient for themselves and their tenants. As these proprietary churches became increasingly common, their owners began staffing them with permanent chaplains, forging an enduring relationship between priests and the gentry.

Chapter 3 examines the impact of the Norman conquest on pastoral care, a major result of which was the collapse of the minster system. The minsters had been supported by tithes, but the transfer of many churches to Norman ownership and subsequent redirection of tithes undermined the minsters’ coffers, and much of the wealth achieved by those Norman lords was returned to Normandy. Furthermore, Domesday Book provides evidence that Norman lords were granting churches and their incomes to monasteries in Normandy. In addition to acquiring existing churches, Norman lords also built new churches in England, having brought with them a mature Romanesque style from the Continent. In spite of lay involvement in this period, the Norman gentry were devoted to monastic foundations, and almost always chose them for burial.

Moving forward, Saul approaches most chapters thematically, though in a logical chronology. Chapters address topics such as the gentry’s relationship with monasteries, the friars, domestic chapels, chantry chapels and burial. Particularly interesting is Saul’s discussion of collaboration between parties: between gentry donors of parish churches and the monasteries they gave them to, such as in the case of Kilpeck, which likely had continued involvement from Hugh de Kilpeck after it was alienated to St Peter’s Abbey Gloucester in 1134 (pp 58–9), as well as between multiple members of the gentry, and between gentry patrons and clergy for projects such as chancel rebuilding (pp 320–22).

The poverty of previous scholarly publications considering the parish church as a genre forces Lordship and Faith to perform a double duty, explaining the mechanics of English parish churches in general, not just the type Saul sets out to analyse. The result is that, at times, it reads as a state of the field report on English parish church studies – necessary to provide sufficient context for his topic. Lordship and Faith is both architectural and social history, and readers from either camp may be frustrated at times by its hybridity. However, that Saul’s book is a major contribution to the study of both the medieval parish church (as a building and an institution) and the gentry is incontestable, and a welcome indication that scholars are now moving towards taking the parish church seriously as an object of study.