These very valuable volumes contain over six hundred acta of thirteenth-century bishops of Coventry and Lichfield. The documents cover a wide range of issues, but in particular show how important was business involving the control of parish churches, both grants of such churches and, for example, matters relating to vicarages and allocation of revenues. There are a significant number of documents concerning excommunication, especially significations of excommunication sent to the king, asking that the excommunicated person ‘be coerced by royal power according to the custom of your realm to make satisfaction to God and the Church’. There are also accounts of various disputes. Many are settled by mediation rather than formal court decision. However, some cases do illustrate more formal procedures, according to canonical procedures. Some of these appear amongst an extremely interesting group of documents issued not by bishops but by their officers. Both these and the episcopal documents include significant incidental information. For example, a grant of Bishop Roger to Darley Abbey (no. 325), made at London on 25 October 1268, refers to that monastery's goods having been taken away ‘by the agents of Satan in the turmoil that recently occurred in the kingdom (“in turbatione nuper habita in regno per sathane satellites”)’. There are also interesting legal usages, for example arrangements concerning view of frankpledge (no. 211), employment of the phrase ‘in quasi possessione’ (xliv. 450), and a reference to holding ‘in chief’ from the bishop (no. 173). Given the scale of the undertaking, there are inevitably a few typographical errors (including on the contents page), but overall the volumes are a major editorial achievement. In addition, the English summaries of the documents are much more extensive than is normal in such editions, amounting indeed to full or almost full translations (see pp. cxiv–cxv). These again are pleasingly accurate (a rare slip is the insertion of the word ‘corporal’ into the translation of no. 67). The decision to include such translations is extremely welcome for those wishing to use the volumes for teaching undergraduates. Whereas many narrative sources are available in translation, very few corpora of documents are. These two volumes deserve to be the basis of many an undergraduate dissertation as well as for much further scholarly work.