Thomas Fuller is a well-known figure to historians of seventeenth-century England: his Worthies of England offers ripe sentences for quotation on a wide range of important figures. However, his significance as an historian has attracted little sustained scholarly attention. W.B. Patterson's Thomas Fuller constitutes both an authoritative biography and an analysis of Fuller's historical writings in their historical context, including the broader development of an English historiography from the Reformation through the tumult of the Civil Wars and Interregnum.

The book's “Introduction” lays out the development of history writing in England from the early 1500s onward: Patterson argues that Fuller “recover[ed] the nation's religious past in a more comprehensive and coherent way than any of his predecessors, Protestant or Roman Catholic, had done” (8). Subsequent chapters are devoted to such lesser-known works as his published sermons, Holy State, History of Cambridge, and Holy Warre (on the Crusades). Rightly, however, the Church-History of Britain and The History of the Worthies of England most fully engage Patterson's attention, as he explores Fuller's methodology: his gathering of sources and assessment of their original context and biases. Fuller's Church-History continues the historiography that Patterson sees as central to late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Protestantism's attempt to assert its authority on historical as well as biblical grounds.

Throughout, Patterson carefully situates Fuller within the theological and ecclesiastical frameworks of the time. Heavily influenced by such Puritans as William Perkins and Samuel Ward, Fuller was Calvinist in theology and in his early church careers emphasizes the role of preaching. However, his “Puritanism” did not extend to a strong desire for major changes in the worship or governing structures of the church. Patterson emphasizes the centrality of this moderation in Fuller's life and writing. In his Examinations (1643) John Saltmarsh accused Fuller of “excessive moderation”, but Fuller was quite happy to identify with what he called the “Moderates” of the church, whom he felt were the ignored majority in the tumult of the 1640s. Such a position allowed him to swear both the “Et Cetera Oath,” the Laudian document defending the established governing structures of the church, and the Parliamentary “Protestation” of 1642, which defended the Protestantism of the Church of England. This moderation, however, should not be misconstrued as time-serving since Fuller was really the opposite of a trimmer: during the Laudian years of the late 1630s, he stood to the oppressed “Puritan” side, and under Cromwell, he espoused the virtues of episcopacy and the Prayer Book. Patterson recognizes Fuller's sensitivity to the manipulation of language in such ecclesiastical divisions: he was dismayed when “Puritan” was extended in the 1620s from a term to describe those who differed in matters of ecclesiastical structure and liturgy to those who differed in theology (234). Likewise, he mused upon how commitment to the Book of Common Prayer could be described as either “constancy, or obstinacy, love or doting” (quoted on 250).

After the Royalist defeat, Fuller accommodated himself to the new ecclesiastical reality, finding friendship and support from both sides of the divide. However, “he was not so satisfied with the present that he ceased to wrestle with what he saw as the catastrophes of the recent past” (148). And although his initial work on church history predated the conflicts of the 1640s and 1650s, they nevertheless informed the Church-History, as it traced how the peace of the English Church was broken. Fuller also sought to establish peace among those of differing theological and ecclesiastical perspectives: his work at healing the breach between himself and Peter Heylyn, the biographer of Laud, is a case in point. Fuller shares this impetus to peace-making within the Church with the subject of Patterson's earlier book, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, however different they were in temperament and situation.

While one long chapter treats the Church-History in relation to ecclesiastical historiography, a second considers it in relation to the immediate context of the Civil Wars. In Patterson's view, Fuller went well beyond religious history in his concern for “his nation, its achievements, its problems, and its prospects” (185). In describing the Middle Ages, Fuller shows the continuing contest between the monarchy and the papacy over control of the church. With the Reformation, the dominant struggle shifted: divisions among the Marian exiles in Frankfurt and then at home during Elizabeth's reign were forebodings of the 1640s conflicts. In this way the book became one of the earliest histories of the Civil War but one fully connected with earlier English history. Fuller saw that the conflicts of the 1640s could have been avoided and that unwise political decisions, especially by King Charles, had triggered the Scottish revolt and ultimately the division into warring English sides in 1642–1643. Patterson also considers Fuller in relation to subsequent histories and shows that among his greatest achievements was to understand church history as not simply ideologically-driven but intertwined with political concerns.

While Patterson largely admires Fuller's historical work, particularly his use of original sources and his attempt to transcend partisanship, he nevertheless recognizes some shortcomings: Fuller's limited understanding of Celtic Christianity, his oversimplification of the Lollards, and, most significantly, his tendency to treat the English Reformation apart from the broader continental movement. Fuller's last great work, The History of the Worthies of England, is less political and interpretive than the Church-History, but Patterson convincingly shows that it is far more than a collection of disparate lives: it offers a description of “the fundamental character of English society” in the period, as Fuller places his subjects within a rich physical and social context (333).

The conclusion ably traces the reception of Fuller over subsequent centuries. One element that could be pursued further, however, is Fuller's writing style, as this heavily affected his reception. Both in his own time and subsequently, readers noted his witty and even fanciful style; for some, this became grounds for disparagement. Neoclassical norms of stylistic restraint led to a rejection of him as a “Man of fancy . . . affecting an odd way of writing” (quoted on 335), in the same way that Donne's poetry was dismissed for its “metaphysical” tendencies. Patterson recognizes these charges by providing quotations, but he does not fully historicize them as part of a broader cultural shift. Overall, however, this book offers an assured and thorough assessment of the life and writings of one certainly worthy of such attention.