Rory MacLellan's monograph – adapted from his recently finished doctoral thesis – offers an insight into the dynamics of patronage surrounding the Knights Hospitaller in the English langue, one of the regional divisions into which the order was organised for administrative purposes. The book is divided into seven chapters (including the introduction and conclusion) and contains twenty-one pages of appendices, the content of which provides details of donations to the Hospitallers – a valuable point of reference. The book can be located within the context of a small corpus of scholarship – most notably, the doctoral thesis of John Walker, completed at the University of St Andrews in 1991, which examined patronage to another great military order, the Knights Templar, and the smaller Order of St Lazarus in the kingdom of England.

MacLellan examines the dynamics of patronage to the Hospitallers across the length and breadth of the British Isles, giving a more detailed account than hitherto attempted. He utilises a range of primary sources – many unpublished – with particular emphasis on cartularies; that is, collections of charters, documents which conveyed benefactions of land and other things to the order by its many patrons. MacLellan argues that donations to the Hospitallers had very little to do with crusading fervour, as evinced by the fact that upsurges in crusading activity did not correlate with commensurate upsurges in patronage. Instead, he concludes that patronage to the Hospitallers in Britain and Ireland had more to do with localism, intercessory prayer and family ties.

Perhaps most significantly, MacLellan concludes that patronage of the Hospitallers ought to be viewed as part of mainstream British and Irish religious history, not as a mere offshoot of crusader studies. This is a salient point and one worthy of emphasis, since the military orders have been viewed in such terms far too often. In truth, the Hospitallers (and the other military orders) were intrinsic to life in the British Isles – socioeconomically, religiously and politically – to some extent independently of their activities in the Latin East. In that sense, MacLellan is helping to edify the existing perception of the military orders. The book is clearly written, well researched and ought to be a valuable resource for scholars of the military orders and of religious patronage in the late medieval British Isles.