The Gilbertine order in medieval England consisted of only some twenty well-established houses. Nearly all were founded during the middle and later years of the twelfth century. By 1200 the initial impetus was clearly weakening, possibly as a result of waning enthusiasm for new foundations within the order. Certainly subsequent initiatives showed a marked tendency to fail. An ambitious foundation in Rome was abandoned within a few years following an acknowledgement by the order itself that they were unable to support it. A Scottish foundation proved abortive. The order was soon to become exclusively English. Furthermore, those houses that did flourish were geographically largely confined to a limited heartland of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Nevertheless the order has attracted the attention of some of the most distinguished historians of the medieval English Church, including Rose Graham, David Knowles, Raymonde Foreville, Christopher Cheney and Giles Constable. This interest has arisen for a number of reasons. The Gilbertines, however limited their impact, were the only religious order actually to be founded in medieval England. Moreover their organisation was distinctive in two respects. Firstly, a number of their communities were ‘double houses’, containing both women and men, sisters alongside lay brothers and canons, although ‘single houses’ founded for men alone became more numerous as the flow of endowments decreased: such houses tended to be smaller and less expensive to endow. Secondly, the order had a distinctive system of government, headed by a single individual, the Master, reflecting in its very name the central role of its founder and first Master, Gilbert of Sempringham. Furthermore the early development of the order was punctuated by a dramatically disruptive event, the so-called revolt of the lay brothers of c. 1164–5. This conflict seems not to have been finally resolved for some twenty years. It engaged the attention not only of Thomas Becket as archbishop of Canterbury but also of the papacy and even of Henry ii himself, generating the while a flood of documentation.

Katharine Sykes has produced what might best be described as a constitutional history of the formation of the order. Her concern is with institutions, with governance and authority, and particularly with the evolution of the role of Master. The future development of the order could scarcely have been envisaged in 1130 when an informal group of seven female recluses gathered at the South Lincolnshire church of Sempringham. Similarly the role of Gilbert within this group was entirely personal and undefined. He was rector of the church itself, but it was probably more important that he was the son of a local Norman landowner and an English mother, a graduate of the schools of Laon and a former member of the household of the bishop of Lincoln. In no sense was he an outsider. A century later everything had changed. A significant number of houses was well established. The order had a constitution in the form of its Institutes, accompanied by a foundation narrative written by the founder himself. Master had succeeded Master in an orderly fashion. An official Vita of the founder had been produced within the order, and Gilbert himself had become a saint.

Yet this evolution had been far from straightforward and it is the chief merit of Sykes's study that she is able by careful analysis to draw out the subtle, uncertain and protracted nature of the process. Initially Gilbert's own intentions were far from clear, as was his status within the order. For many years he did not become a member of ‘his own’ order. His name is not even mentioned in the early foundation charters of two substantial houses, Malton and Watton. In 1147 he was involved in an abortive attempt to affiliate the order to the Cistercians. And it appears to have been as an almost accidental consequence of this failure that Augustinian canons were introduced into the order – a move which, in turn, provoked the dramatic revolt of the lay brethren. Even by the time of Gilbert's death, when he was a great age, the succession to the Mastership of the order and the nature of the office's authority seem to have remained unclear. And it is this unsteady and prolonged ‘institutionalisation’ of the order that forms the focus of Sykes's attention.

This attention adopts the approach and techniques of the constitutional historian; devotees of Bishop Stubbs would immediately recognise the genre. There is a close analysis of the precise meaning of certain terms – the shift over time from Magister Gilbertus to Gilbertus Magister, the distinction between the roles of magister and prior of the order, the exact implications of a multitude of specific references to Gilbert in contemporary charters. A number of key documents are subjected to prolonged and detailed examination in order to uncover their hidden meaning. It is argued that the Vita of Gilbert is not simply a work of hagiography but a justification, or legitimisation, of Roger's succession after Gilbert's death. The final version of the Institutes of the order is examined as a form of double palimpsest – incorporating both the order's own injunctions generated over a wide period of time and also extensive borrowings from Cistercian legislation. Such close attention can pay dividends. It can reveal clearly the somewhat haphazard growth of the order. It can delineate more persuasively the role of Gilbert himself, zealous but remote, autocratic but saintly, respected by nearly all but showing a lack of leadership at a crucial moment. In particular Sykes effectively deconstructs the common stark contrast between the charismatic founder of an order and his bureaucratic successors. Gilbert deployed both qualities.

But such close, often verbal, attention can be wearisome and, more important, both deadening and dead-ended. The shadow of the thesis would seem to loom large. Many very small hares are pursued to exhaustion. A long discussion of the use of the title ‘prior’ appears inconclusive, even pettifogging. Accounts of legal disputes after Gilbert's death are submerged by detail, and the extended survey of Cistercian borrowings in the Institutes seems unnecessarily prolonged. Comprehensiveness and the privileging of detail can themselves be the enemy of understanding, particularly when precise analysis is applied to resistant material. Furthermore wider perspectives on the nature of the order have recently been opened with, for instance, studies of their liturgy and of the distinctive architecture of their houses. But Sykes chooses to focus on structures of government and administration. It also has to be said that Sykes's prose is not always helpfully translucent, nor is her subediting immaculate. Furthermore her tone is regularly rebarbative, quick to demean her – often distinguished – predecessors. David Knowles, for example, is castigated for his adoption of a ‘whig’ teleology in his account of monastic development where custom and tradition are replaced by law and personal dependencies by articulated government. Sykes's own account of the early history of the Gilbertines is detailed and nuanced but would seem in general terms to follow exactly such a pattern.

But there is also an important difference of approach. David Knowles never forgot that he was writing the history of religious orders. Sykes's study, for all its undoubted merits, is predominantly the history of a religious order with the religion left out. Her predecessors, despite their possible failings in detailed judgement, left one wishing to know more about this remarkable product of medieval English spirituality.