It is now well over a half a century since this book was first published, over forty years since its author died. The English Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries has been studied in depth; nuances beyond counting have been added to our appreciation of the subject. The study of papal decretals, on which some part of the later chapters was based, has been totally transformed. Yet The English Church and the Papacy remains the indispensable rendezvous from which all expeditions over this territory begin. More than that, it is a model of historical method, a classic. The author tried first to determine what was the law of the English Church in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, and then to draw out the consequences of what he had found in a general survey of the relations of England and Rome. The crisp clear judgements on themes and characters in the second half sometimes wear a dated look; yet they are always worth pondering still. But of the legal enquiry in the first part no such qualification is needed: one can sense the excitement of the hunt, and no serious scholar now doubts that he found the quarry. Lanfranc's own collection in Trinity College, Cambridge, B. 16. 44, is secure of the immortality he gave it.

Zachary Nugent Brooke was born in 1883, and read Classics and History at St John's College, Cambridge.