For much of the 14th century the papacy was based in Avignon. England and France were intermittently at war and the Pontiff's proximity to the French monarch complicated England's relationship with its spiritual leader. The English Parliament consistently fretted over the appointment of foreigners to domestic church positions, and at various times enacted legislation limiting papal taxation, fearing that the money leaving England might fund the war against it.

Some historians have seen these struggles with papal power as precursors to Henry VIII's split from Rome; A. D. M. Barrell seeks to avoid such broadly sketched themes and instead investigates in detail the implementation of papal policy in northern England and, for comparison, in Scotland. By collating local administrative documents with papal archives, Barrell pieces together a detailed account of practice and procedure, rather than theory and design.

The book concentrates on economic, juridical and administrative information; consequently the scene depicted is fragmented, detailed and dry. What does emerge is a picture of a bureaucracy that contained both local and international elements and interests and that tended to roll along regardless of the political exigencies of any particular moment. Papal appointments, although international in implication, could be used as simply an alternative to local patronage in the search for a career; papal taxation could similarly be milked for local or national gain.

In Scotland a certain paucity of evidence limits Barrell's analysis in some areas. Scotland was less implicated in European politics, and most papal appointments were drawn from the local population; unsurprisingly, therefore, less tension resulted. But what Barrell tentatively appears to point to is a surprising lack of difference between the two areas. Bureaucracy was the quiet, unassuming champion.

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This is a solid, scholarly book. It has the great strengths of an English historiographical tradition: careful methodology, painstaking detail, unimpeachable accuracy. If it shares some of the same weaknesses - an empirical naivety about causation and a reluctance to draw conclusions broader than the contingent - that is not to damn it, but to place it for the utility of other academics.

John Arnold is a PhD student, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York.

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