This book is not about the robbing of churches, or madness, and has little direct reference to religion. It is rather a microscopic examination of the litigation and legal warfare that consumed two Gloucestershire families over several generations from the era of the Reformation to the age of the English civil wars. The dispute had its origins in a disputed inheritance, but ramified and grew into a seemingly interminable squabble over lands and leases, the fate of the Lady Katherine Berkeley grammar school at Wotton-under-Edge (founded in 1384) and the processes and proprieties of the legal system itself. Midway through this struggle, in November 1618, the landed lawyer Benjamin Crokey was heard to say to sympathetic drinkers at the Three Cups inn in London that his opponent, John Smyth of Nibley, who had designs on the school and its lands, was a ‘jesuitical fellow’, ‘a churchrobber’ and a man of ‘black conscience’. Smyth, for his part, returned the insult in 1623, saying that Crokey ‘fretted more like a madman than a sober subject and temperate Christian’, as they continued their conflict in and out of the courts. Jason Peacey has grabbed these fragments for his title, and rarely refers to them again.

It was well known at the time, and has been repeatedly confirmed, that the gentry of early modern England were insatiable litigants. Cases grew in complexity, seemed to last interminably and generated mountains of paperwork, as participants sought advantage in every possible venue. Gentry muniment collections, many now in county record offices, bulge with bills and briefs, appeals and allegations, depositions and demurrers on every aspect of estate management and family business. The archive generated by the Warrens Court dispute in Gloucestershire is especially rich, but what sets it apart now is Peacey's analysis of its complexities.

The book has three substantial sections, the first outlining the issues in the case, the second examining the strategies of the principal litigants and the third pondering the ideological structures and connections that sustained the dispute across generations. This entails considerable reiteration, close reading and archival attention that might have been aided by a timeline and cast of characters. Valuable material touching the finances, management and perils of an ancient grammar school is scattered through several chapters. An eye-opening discussion of the writing, publication and dispersal of a contentious printed pamphlet shows how the effort to engage public opinion made trouble for its author. The theme throughout is the determination of protagonists to pursue every avenue of law, even when experience, reason and counsel would consider the matter hopeless.

Peacey explains his methodology, and makes claims for its significance, but the density of discussion sometimes makes for heavy going. The tenacity of the author in ‘this difficult journey’ (p. 72) matches ‘the serious and dogged way in which Crokey and Smyth contested their dispute’ (p. 83). His meticulous reconstruction of ‘the terrain of litigation’ ranges across ‘the entire legal landscape’ (p. 105), which extended to parliament and the public domain as well as the courts of Chancery and Common Pleas, King's Bench, Star Chamber and local assizes. The result is a deeply contextualised microhistorical study of a protracted and tangled dispute that had no clear winner. Litigants defied advice that their cause could not be won. Their outlay on lawyers, clerks, lobbying and travel by far outweighed the potential yield of any favourable settlement. Much more was at stake than money, including honour, pride and emotional or psychological investment.

Peacey suggests that driving the dispute, though veiled to the point of opacity, were differences of ideology and religion. Discovering them involves creative speculation, inferring ideas from actions, and teasing out opinions from networks of association. Neither Smyth nor Crokey declared themselves in testimonies or correspondence, so Peacey searches elsewhere for their religious orientation and attachments. ‘Mentalities’, he believes, may be discerned ‘from sources that did not ostensibly record intellectual engagement’ (p. 198). This is a challenging undertaking that requires not just reading against the grain but searching around the corner. Peacey's attempt ‘to tease out the deeper issues in play, in terms of ideas, attitudes and beliefs’ (p. 201) depends on hints, glimpses and ‘tantalising clues’ (p. 216). John Smyth, for example, was not only a ruthless litigant but a favourer of country recreations and a contributor to the repair of St Paul's Cathedral, which aligned him with policies of Charles i, Archbishop Laud and the established Church of England. Benjamin Crokey, though silent on religious matters, can be identified as plausibly Puritan through his network of allies and associates and the readers and distributors of the pamphlet he wrote about his case. The evidence is intriguing rather than definite, suggestive rather than persuasive, and Peacey is forthright about its limitations. None the less it allows him to argue that this long-standing and richly documented legal feud was conditioned by, and reflective of, the deeper ideological divisions of early modern England. By this reading the case transcends its local geography to reveal yet again the socio-economic fault lines and religious polarisation of Charles i's kingdom. Peacey's parting suggestion is that other complex legal tangles, yet to be unravelled, may have similar ideological dimensions.