Since this book was first published in 1931 the English church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries has been studied in depth, yet Z. N. Brooke's The English Church and the Papacy, now reissued with a new introduction by C. N. L. Brooke, remains the indispensable point from which all expeditions over this territory begin. The author set out first to determine what the law of the English Church was, and to seek the books on which it was based; then to draw out the consequences of what he had discovered in a general survey of the relations of England and Rome. The crisp, clear judgements on themes and characters in the second half are still worth pondering, for all the nuances that have been added since.
