Graham Mayhew has written a heroic study of Lewes Priory. Heroic first of all in terms of its scale. His book consists of almost five hundred large pages of relatively small print, liberally sustained by numerous plans, tables and illustrations. Heroic also in terms of the sources placed under contribution. Mayhew's investigations have taken him not only to such obvious resorts as the National Archives, the British Library and the Bodleian Library, but also to the East Sussex Record Office, the Norfolk Record Office, the West Yorkshire Archives and, even further afield, to the Beinecke Library at Yale and the Royal Library of Copenhagen. His labours are amply represented by a select bibliography that extends over fourteen pages. But, above all, the heroism lies in Mayhew's range of vision. This is not the history of a single religious house, but of a major institution placed within every relevant context – religious, social, political, economic, aesthetic and even archaeological.

There can be no doubt that Lewes Priory merits this degree of attention. The few surviving remains above ground belie both the monumental grandeur of the original priory buildings and also the role of the house in English life. The priory was founded within about a decade of the Conquest by William, earl de Warenne, one of the Conqueror's closest followers. The circumstances of its foundation were themselves unusual. The house originated in a personal visit by the earl and his wife to the motherhouse of Cluny. The abbot of Cluny initially hesitated, and then agreed to send four of his monks to England only after receiving written guarantees from the earl concerning their endowment and similarly explicit support from the king himself. The subsequent early history of the house took a more conventional course. The founder's initial substantial endowment was quickly followed by the normal multitude of lesser gifts from his subtenants and associates. There was also royal backing. Henry i, himself the founder of a Cluniac house at Reading, chose its first two priors from Lewes, and the house received charters of support from both Stephen and the Empress Matilda. As early as 1121 the house held seventy-seven churches and three dependent monasteries. This flood of endowment, fully catalogued by Mayhew, had largely dried up by the middle years of the twelfth century but it had been sufficient to rank Lewes eighth in the table of English monastic incomes in 1291, ahead of both Durham and Winchester. What is of greater interest is the more distinctive story of the subsequent decline of the house. Some of the elements in this decline were common to many religious houses – the lack of new endowments, the effects of the Black Death and heavy royal taxation. But others had a particular impact on Lewes. Few were more immediate than the battle of Lewes of 1264 between Henry iii and Simon de Montfort. Not only did the royalist army garrison the priory at the monks' expense for a week during May 1264, but after their defeat the royalist soldiers fled into the priory itself where they were besieged by de Montfort, who bombarded the house with burning missiles. For most of the rest of its existence the priory rarely escaped from heavy indebtedness. Some of this was to be attributed again to its distinctive status as an alien priory. The house eventually secured denization in 1351–2 but this was secured only at the expense of alienating advowsons to the king; and Mayhew calculates that in general Lewes lost about a half of its revenues in taxation in each year of the French wars. In a particularly paradoxical, and painful, fashion this ‘alien’ priory also suffered directly at the hands of the French. Its situation on the south coast exposed its property to attack by marauding French fleets and in 1377 its prior was even captured by the French, obliging the priory to pay a ransom equivalent to more than two years' income in order to secure his release. As Mayhew observes, ‘Ironically the largest alien priory in England was hardest hit by the French attackers.’ This was not the only irony inherent in the complex fluctuations of the Anglo-French relationship. Lewes possessed two daughter houses in northern France, Étoutteville and Mortemer-sur-Eaulne. Once Lewes achieved denization these houses presumably achieved the anomalous status of alien priories in France. Certainly they acquired an aura of desolation, being minute in size, deprived of support from their mother house, and the prior of Étoutteville denounced by the visitors as a notorious incontinent and deflowerer of virgins. Equally distinctive is the story of the dissolution of Lewes in 1537, and particularly the consequential destruction of its buildings. The priory was not left to decay, gradually exploited as a quarry for local builders or converted to other uses. Rather, the church was simply and rapidly razed to the ground, and the letters of the Italian engineer responsible, Giovanni Portinari, provide an unusually detailed and poignant account of the inventive destructiveness entailed in the ending of monastic life.

Graham Mayhew's account of these matters is strikingly detailed, even at times laborious, but not in itself remarkable. Rather, the strength of his approach lies in its contextuality, that is, his sense of the many and varied meanings of this great house and his awareness of its total environment. He is not afraid of treating the liturgy as important, basing his account on the information provided by the Lewes Breviary-Missal in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the cognate Cluniac Psalter at Yale, and supported by legible plans of liturgical processions. His description of the monastic buildings, although necessarily partly conjectural, shows how the priory church was modelled on Cluny III and how financial pressures limited any extensive rebuilding after the mid-thirteenth century. But it is his emphasis on the place of Lewes at the hub of a nationwide sphere of influence that is particularly striking. The priory's reach extended through its scattered estates, its dependent monasteries and its appropriated churches. All of these aspects of its imperium receive precise attention. Estate management looms large and the account is richly detailed, although perhaps insufficiently comparative. Was Lewes distinctive in any way amongst major religious houses in the management of its estates? The answer would seem to be that it was not. But this source provides usefully specific information concerning the monastic diet and the priory's massive involvement in the wool trade with Italian merchants, even though this can also appear inconsequential. We are told, for example, that eighteen rabbits were sold from the priory's Norfolk estate of Heacham in 1373–4. The eight dependent monasteries, particularly Prittlewell, Monkton Farleigh and Castle Acre, also receive ample treatment in terms of a breakdown of their estate income, their visitation records and a transcription of any surviving inventories. This functional account is relieved only by the picture of the disastrous consequences of the appointment as prior of Castle Acre of the illegitimate son of the priory's patron. Soon the prior had fled, the number of monks was reduced from thirty-six to thirteen (and three of these were apostates), the priory's property alienated and the house plunged into debt.

More challenging, and even controversial, is the evidence for the cultural – or spiritual – imperialism of Lewes Priory as manifested in the iconography of the various decorative programmes to be seen in its appropriated, or associated, parish churches. It is Mayhew's contention, amply supported by illustration, that a characteristically Cluniac spirituality can be discerned in these programmes. The paintings in Clayton church are elucidated in the light of Cluniac piety. The decorative scheme at Hardham is multi-layered and allusive but echoes a distinctively Cluniac spirituality. Similar judgements are made of the door at Fishlake and the font at Brighton. Such enterprises represent, in Mayhew's words, ‘a carefully planned and theologically complex iconographical scheme which can only have been initiated by a major ecclesiastical patron’. At times the argument can seem somewhat forced. The connections of some of the churches with Lewes are not absolutely conclusive. Representations of fundamental Christian doctrines, such as the Last Judgement, cannot be simply and entirely credited to Cluniac influence. Cluniacs come to be seen everywhere. Even St Peter comes close to being claimed for the order, and the great twelfth-century bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, who had a profound influence on many aspects of contemporary English life, is rarely mentioned except in his guise as a member of the order. Nevertheless Mayhew raises here some profound issues of cultural transmission, perhaps more delicate and subtle than he always allows but representing some of the most rewarding features of his study.

Sometimes the comprehensive mass of specific detail almost overwhelms the thrust of his arguments. This makes it the more surprising that Mayhew gives so little precise attention to the chronicle of the house – a source derived from the very heart of the community, whereas so much of his evidence is concerned with its external activities. The Lewes chronicle poses particular problems. The original version has not survived but what have survived are three abbreviated texts, the longest one at the British Library, another at Copenhagen and a third in the Vatican. The British Library text, which was transcribed by a monk of the house in 1312, has been available in print since 1849. The Copenhagen version is perhaps a century and a half later, running to 1485. Little is said about the Vatican text. These various versions can sometimes differ in surprising ways, even in their accounts of the foundation of the house. But, as Mayhew perceptively suggests, it looks as though these various versions may have been produced by a sequence of novice monks as a form of initiation, a way of instilling in them a sense of the house's history and traditions. In the latest version there are signs that a novice master may even have corrected the text and added information that he thought should have been recorded. In other words the texts of the chronicle are an exercise in self-regarding. They show how the community saw itself, and distinguished what was important in its past. They merit closer analysis in themselves, but they are largely passed over, and the Vatican manuscript does not even appear in the bibliography.

Graham Mayhew has not been well served by the Lewes History Press. His printed text contains far too many typographical slips. Each of the first three pages for example would bear correction, and the bibliography needs extensive revision. The book is generously illustrated but lacks a list of plates, with the result that it is almost impossible to locate a particular item. All of this is regrettable. In many ways Mayhew has produced a fine book, the fruit of considerable learning, much thought and a lifetime's personal devotion to the site of this once great monastic house.