Missed Opportunities? is a collection of articles previously published between 1990 and 2003, to which David Postles has added an introduction, bibliography, and index. The collection of papers is divided into two parts. The first consists of chapters “Religious Houses and the Laity in Eleventh- to Thirteenth-Century England: An Overview”; “Lamps, Lights and Layfolk: ‘Popular’ Devotion Before the Black Death”; “Monastic Burials of Non-patronal Lay Benefactors”; “Small Gifts, but Big Rewards: The Symbolism of Some Gifts to the Religious”; “Pittances and Pittancers”; “The Austin Canons in English Towns, ca. 1100–1350”; and “Heads of Religious Houses as Administrators.” The second part focuses on the nature of land tenure, services, and rights of inheritance prior to the thirteenth century and includes: “Gifts in Frankalmoign, Warranty of Land, and Feudal Society”; “Seeking the Language of Warranty of Land in Twelfth-Century England”; “Tenure in Frankalmoign and Knight Service in Twelfth-Century England: Interpretation of the Charters”; and “Choosing Witnesses in Twelfth-Century England.”

A major theme of these collected papers concerns the lay perception of the efficacy of intercession for personal salvation in relationship to the religious institutions chosen for benefaction. The chronological focus is on the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries when religious houses acquired considerable estates but were also challenged by the new preaching orders and the development of the parochial system in the early thirteenth century.

Postles finds that there is no simple model to describe what actually occurred at the local level in different areas of England, and he argues that monastic establishments, that is, the regular clergy of large Benedictine houses, the Cistercians, and the Austin canons in towns, continued to maintain a certain allegiance from benefactors into the thirteenth century, although gifts to these institutions became more socially exclusive and the majority of lay benefaction shifted to local parish churches. Considerable evidence emerges from charters as well as monastic accounts and wills for a wide variety of gifts in kind and land made by “ordinary people” from the lesser knightly classes down to landowning peasants and townsmen. Postles is cautious in positing causal relationships between shifts in religious benefaction from monasteries to the secular clergy, but he cites Lateran IV (1215) and the Council of Oxford (1222) as factors that reinforced the rise in importance of the parish church as a center of lay piety. The critical point made in these detailed studies is that the general shift away from bequests to the religious houses to parish churches was far more complex and needs to be considered in light of the local economy, patterns of land alienation, status of the “Religious” within a particular social group, psychological factors, and the involvement of monasteries in land tenure to which service was attached. What does emerge, as Postles's title suggests, is as that the “missed opportunity?” denotes the ultimate failure of traditional monastic houses to sustain the primary devotion and benefaction of the majority of the laity.

Part 2 examines the consequences of the alienation of secular fiefs to monastic houses from a legal and economic perspective, that is, property-owning services such as scutage or military service. As religious houses expanded and acquired land either by gift or purchase, they became inevitably embroiled in the fiscal and legal issues of land tenure within the feudal system. While examining the development of specific clauses or formulae that qualify and insure benefices, Postles demonstrates how both the intentions and practice of gifting in free alms (frankalmoign) descended to a mixture of partial alms, partial payments, and concessions, especially in cases involving subinfeudation. The religious houses, such as the Cistercians, who had an impact on the agrarian economy thus forfeited their earlier reform ideals of exclusion and mission as they became more and more involved with secular land tenure. By implication, Postles's last papers lead to the general conclusion that the spiritual cachet of religious houses was ultimately eroded in their involvement in property tenure and, hence, the allegiances of donors were drawn elsewhere. Postles is careful to point out, however, that this trend was complex and certainly not uniform, since family and local allegiances to religious houses (for example, St. Albans) might have been one of the most important factors for continued patronage.

This collection is for the specialist familiar with English common law, the legal terminology (Latin) of cartularies, and an understanding of feudal land tenure. The introduction does little to inform the general medievalist, and the author tends to assume his readers are familiar with the historiography. On the other hand, each article contributes to the larger, complex picture of social, religious, and economic changes that occurred between lay patronage and religious houses, and each offers a stimulating discussion of social practices. To broaden the appeal of this collection, it would have been helpful to append a glossary of specialized terms and to draw together the main inferences into a conclusion. Nonetheless, this collection is a valuable contribution toward understanding religious affiliations in the lower strata of the landowning classes.