Robert Ingram's study of Thomas Secker, for thirty-four years one of the Church of England's most conscientious eighteenth-century bishops, a polymath and the Laud figure of his age, stands partly in the tradition of episcopal biographies of the first half of the twentieth century by Norman Sykes, Edward Carpenter and Tindal Hart, which illustrated the abilities and energy of early eighteenth-century English bishops. Ingram's aim, however, is broader than the rehabilitation of the established Church in the mid-eighteenth century. His aim is to use Secker's life and career to re-evaluate not merely religious life in eighteenth-century England, but as a window to view and comment upon English society as a whole. He holds that bishops, through their extensive and efficient diocesan networks, as revealed by numerous recently published editions of visitation returns and regional studies of the established Church during the period, were sensitive barometers to changes in English society, and enable us to appreciate the changes afoot. He shows how Secker's life reflected these changes: a convert to Anglicanism from Presbyterianism, educated in medicine on the continent, a beneficiary of benign and efficient patronage, a defender and promoter of theological orthodoxy, and a model pastor and preacher in fashionable Westminster, an astute politician trusted by successive ministers of the crown and kings, viewing Anglicanism in relation both to North America and the European Protestant churches. Quarrying Secker's voluminous correspondence Ingram demonstrates Secker's perceptiveness, flexibility and adaptability, without denying his somewhat abrasive personality. As a reformer, aiming to revitalise the established Church, Secker, Ingram claims, reflects the mindset of his age. He was seeking to adapt the Church from within to his understanding of the changes taking place in English society. Ingram believes that this gives a more accurate impression of the age than seeing it as the birthplace of modernity. He points out that eighteenth-century reform was guided by reference to the past, not by an unknowable future. Reform in the Church involved reference to the ‘primitive Church’, and the warning object lesson of the turmoil of the events of the 1640s and 1650s. Ingram's aim is, through this account of a long-serving bishop and archbishop, to reintegrate religion into the total picture of eighteenth century. How far he is successful will be demonstrated by the extent to which historians other than those interested in the Church and religion take up the wider implications of his work. It is to be hoped that this well-written book, drawing on extensive reading in contemporary sources and demonstrating wide reading in the cultural, social and political history of the period, will be read by a wide audience. Perhaps it will encourage more historians to see the people of the eighteenth century on their own terms, with religion at the heart of public as well as private life. This is an important contribution to eighteenth-century historiography, marred only by the number of typographical errors which escaped the publisher's vigilance.