There is a natural tendency to isolate periods and subjects in history, for the individual writer is anxious to give a unity to his theme. The result may be somewhat misleading, and not only in biographies, since the setting is often as important as the picture. The history of the English Church in the Middle Ages has especially suffered from being treated thus in isolation, as if it were a subject complete in itself. There is justification for such treatment in modern times, and this has encouraged the idea that it bore a similar character in the Middle Ages also. Sometimes its history is told as part of the general history of England, and of course any history of England in the Middle Ages which ignored the Church would be of little value; but in this way too it tends to be isolated from its proper environment. Before its story can be told separately or as part of general English history, it needs to be depicted in its rightful setting. The history of the English Church in the Middle Ages must primarily be considered as a part of medieval Church history.

This sounds so obvious a platitude that I might well have refrained from giving utterance to it, were it not that it is just this treatment which it has never properly received.