After some years in which English language scholars made much of the running in Lollard studies comes a substantial work by a historian. This Oxford dissertation bears all the hallmarks of a thesis: it is very careful work, extremely well-referenced and lavishly laced with examples. It is a sound and learned book, packed with useful references, but it is far from easy reading. Ian Forrest prefers the passive voice to the active, and sometimes displays a Germanic discourtesy to his verbs. Though readers must applaud the care and learning which marks the successful doctoral submission, they will lament the author's retention of an excessively viscous style.

Looking at heresy from the viewpoint of the ecclesiastical establishment is certainly novel, and because the author takes an overview no one person or group dominates the story, though the book centres on England's southern province during the pontificates of Thomas Arundel (from 1399) and Henry Chichele, and discusses and analyses a core of evidence from a variety of angles. The story moves from the universal to the local. The author examines the canon law of heresy, stressing that heresy is, ultimately, known only to God. This explains why summonses to investigation never mention the word ‘heresy’ but label such possible deviation as ‘erroneous enormities contrary to the catholic faith’. The suggestion (pp. 53–4) that the inquisition was active in England is unproven; what bishops used were ad hoc commissaries with powers to collect evidence and examine witnesses, in matters of faith, as in other irregularities and disputes of all kinds. The core of the books tells how heresy was detected, investigated and knowledge of the measures enacted against it was propagated, and for this reviewer some of the most rewarding pages concerned the contacts and friendship networks among episcopal and royal servants, and the links formed at university. The last chapter is grandly entitled, ‘The social contours of heresy detection’, but might more honestly and less pretentiously have been called ‘Bishop Repingdon's visitation of the archdeaconry of Leicester in 1413’. Philip Repingdon had been one of Wycliffe's earliest and keenest supporters, and his reconversion to orthodoxy, and subsequent promotions, constituted one of the Church's most striking successes. Concentration on the Church means that the concerns of the secular authorities are largely set aside, but, by compensation, the author illuminates a number of the links between heresy and local communities, some of which were very subtle.