The local ecclesiastical hierarchy was headed by the bishops. To them fell the ultimate responsibility for the administration of their diocese and for the control of their flock, and upon them was also laid a considerable burden of secular business. For bishops were great temporal lords as well as leaders of the church; many had already been deeply involved in royal and local administration, and most could expect to be employed by the crown as counsellors or commissioners and even in matters of local defence. They could also expect to receive instructions from the papal curia on both routine and particular matters; and by the fourteenth century the great majority of sees throughout Europe were being filled by the practice of provision. The importance of bishops in the administrative arrangements of crown and Papacy meant that both powers had a more than passing interest in their appointment and in their subsequent careers.

The Scottish bishops had had unusually close links with the Papacy even at a time when the authority of the Holy See was much less keenly felt in England. The old theory pressed by York, backed by papal pronouncements and injunctions until the 1160s, was that the archbishop of York was metropolitan of the Scottish sees as well as those of Durham and Carlisle.