It may be helpful to the reader if some inadequacies obvious to the author of this book are acknowledged at the outset. The first has to do with its title, the justification for which is that it is more accurate than all conceivable alternatives – at least in expressing aspiration if not necessarily accomplishment. To call it The Liturgical Books of Medieval England would misrepresent what is attempted: a genuinely historical account of what can be known about the Latin liturgy as used in England during the middle ages, based primarily, but by no means exclusively, on evidence drawn from the surviving service books and fragments. A fuller explanation of this hope and what is involved in trying to fulfill it is provided in the Introduction. Here the reader is asked mainly to notice that the indefinite article is employed deliberately: what is offered here is a, with no pretence to being the definitive, history of the subject. But it is intended as a history, not as an inventory or conspectus of sources, nor as an introduction to an admittedly complex subject. If it were not palpably absurd, a more accurate title might be An Essay on the History of Medieval England as seen through Liturgical Sources.

The next inadequacy is apparent in the book's length: it is too short. Treatment of the announced subject in a single volume, even one with the generous word-limit allowed me by Cambridge University Press, has required the almost complete omission of three large areas: (1) nearly everything having to do with distinctively episcopal liturgies (ordinations, consecration of virgins and other special classes of people, confirmations, dedications of churches and their equipment, coronations)…