Simon Phillips's book covers the period from the accession of Edward i to 1540 and focuses mainly on the Hospitaller prior's activities in royal service rather than on the government of his priory and his relations with the order's headquarters in the East. A close study of documents in the National Archives at Kew as well as of those in the National Library in Malta allows the author to challenge or qualify a number of generalisations made by historians of crusades and military orders about the prior's links with the crown. The prior was not automatically a royal councillor: he did not become a regular member of the king's council before the middle of the fifteenth century; and it was not until then that he came to be regarded as the premier baron in parliament. The prior's importance as a diplomat varied: his employment in this capacity grew in frequency from 1440, and was particularly intensive in the time of Prior Docwra (1501–27). It is also argued that earlier writers have exaggerated the degree of friction between the Hospital and the crown. Although priors were employed in a wide variety of capacities – they started to hold military positions in the 1330s, and in 1362 a prior was first appointed as a trier of petitions – the sources unfortunately provide only limited insights into their conduct as royal servants, and it is often difficult to gain an impression of the individual contributions made by them; and only occasional comparisons are attempted with the roles of priors in other western countries in the later Middle Ages. It is also not easy to assess whether English priors had much choice about entering the king's service. Phillips argues that they did, but this claim is not fully substantiated: as the Hospital needed royal favour, it may have been unwise to refuse office without good reason. The book ends with a discussion of the secularisation of the order, in the sense of the prior's loss of control of Hospitaller possessions to laymen, from the last decade of the fifteenth century onwards. It is claimed that the process accelerated in the pre-Dissolution period. This is a subject, however, which could be viewed in a wider context: already in the later thirteenth century capitular decrees and papal letters indicate a concern about unwise leasing and farming of Hospitaller property. The study provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the prior's activities in royal service, and shows how these increased in the later Middle Ages, but the book would have benefited from more rigorous editing.