In this well-researched and tightly focused book, Reider Payne investigates four major though disparate ecclesiastical patronage networks in later Georgian England: those centring on the second and third earls of Hardwicke; the Harrises of Christchurch; Charles Jenkinson, cabinet minister under North and Pitt the Younger; and George Pretyman, bishop of Lincoln and Pitt's key ecclesiastical adviser. If the book is conceptually unambitious beyond a restatement of the centrality of patronage to the institutional life of Church and State, its secure archival foundations make it extremely useful for all students of eighteenth-century Anglicanism. The first two case studies revolve around private patrons. Philip, 2nd earl of Hardwicke (1722–90), had nothing like the same public importance as his father, the Lord Chancellor, and yet nurtured and extended an ecclesiastical network in Cambridgeshire to bequeath to his nephew; the Harrises (who gained a peerage in 1788) had no such county dominance but the use that they made of the one living in their gift helped to confirm their importance within the borough and beyond. With Charles Jenkinson, Payne has a significant power broker to investigate, a minister well-connected with Oxford opinion through his clients in the university. Chapter vi, on Pretyman, is the most important in the book arguing strongly as it does for the bishop's decisive involvement in most appointments to bishoprics from the late 1780s onwards. This is fine as far as it goes but makes insufficient allowance for the relatively voluminous survival of Pretyman's papers by comparison with other members of the bench, not least Archbishop John Moore. Payne even dubs Pretyman an ‘unofficial member of Pitt's government’ (p. 238); he might also have considered a comparison with the contemporary French system of a bishop operating as minister for the Feuille des bénéfices.