The minster of SS Peter and Wilfred in Ripon, the focus of this study, was, as its author points out, an anachronism by the period covered by this book: a relic of the old form of parochial organisation by which a minster church and its clergy served a range of smaller settlements. Beverley minster in the East Riding is the closest parallel, although its parish did not compare in size with Ripon's eighty plus square miles. In Ripon these were served, in practice, by vicars of the six canons, whose prebends corresponded with defined regions within the parish. Parishioners were expected to come into the minster for the high feasts and christenings, but village chapels and, in some cases, the private chapels of resident gentry were the usual setting for mass, and, with an appropriate licence, for weddings and churchings as well. Mapping this network of provision sets the necessary context for what is the author's main concern – the evocation of parishioners’ engagement with religion during the late Middle Ages, defined here as 1380–1522. Inevitably this can only be speculative, although good use is made of surviving local wills. The writer also does much to re-create the cycle of liturgical observance and, in the case of the minster itself, the architectural setting in which it took place. He very firmly resists any attempt to look further ahead, understandably perhaps, but the apparent assumption throughout that parishioners were getting what they wanted from the minster and its clerical servants does leave a rather big question hanging.