In an earlier volume an attempt was made to write the history of the monastic order in England from the times of Dunstan to the Fourth Council of the Lateran. Between that Council and the Dissolution more than three centuries elapsed, but the story of the fortunes of the monks during that long space has never been told at length. The reasons for this neglect are not far to seek. During the earlier period monastic history abounds in notable events and striking personalities; new orders appear one after the other, and the older bodies undergo rapid changes; of all these vicissitudes we have vivid contemporary accounts, often written by the monks themselves, and the letters and biographies of the actors give depth and breadth, light and shade, to the picture. From the end of the twelfth century all this is changed. The monastic life and institutions, at least to a casual observer, appear to become static. There are no arresting developments, no revolutionary reforms, no leaders and saints of the stature of Dunstan, Lanfranc, Ailred and Hugh of Lincoln, and even a well-read student of the Middle Ages would be hard put to it to describe the changes that had taken place in the life of the monks between the age of Simon de Montfort and that of Thomas More.

Human institutions, however, are never wholly static, and it was a conviction that movement and change had taken place that led to the undertaking of a continuation of the earlier book through an age less familiar, and in a sense less grateful, to the monastic historian.