Chapter One concentrated on the years around 900, a period of exiguous evidence. This chapter, in contrast, considers material from the later tenth and eleventh centuries in which the theories and practices surrounding death and dying are much better attested, and the bulk of the chapter is a close study of one source in particular. This is a mid-eleventh-century liturgical, confessional and penitential anthology (Oxford, Bodl. Laud Miscellaneous 482), which returns continually to the theme of the relationship between a priest and the soul in his care, especially at these moments of crisis. This manuscript has never been considered as a whole, although it is in one hand and its contents are intricately interwoven, and the argument here is that it was compiled to train priests for their part at the deathbed.

Very little English liturgical material survives from before the late tenth century, and it is hard to set what there is in its social context. It may be that all we can see directly are the ceremonies to which a tiny group of people had access, but the texts themselves assume that these rites are available for all the community of the faithful, ordained and lay. This suggests that there could have been a wide awareness of the rites, even among many of the people who may not have benefited from them directly. One of the most prominent activities enjoined in these texts is confession, which is found at the heart of the rite for anointing the sick.