Extant accounts for these five dioceses do indeed disclose little about the position of the table.
A dislocation occurred by the early sixteenth century, however, for penance in the market place seems to have already declined in some dioceses.
There is therefore much to recommend this book as a fine study of a diocese's monasticism in a time of expansion.
Also, their strength of purpose can only mean that they were reflecting the disposition of the lower clergy in their dioceses.
Their diocese was too large for them to manage and no organisational substructure had yet been developed.
Magistrates and collectors of revenue are now no longer acquainted with their districts, bishops with their dioceses, or curates with their parishes.
Yet the early decades of the seventeenth century saw a concerted effort by the episcopate to bring religious order to dioceses.
They should bookmark the tables of abbreviations, both that for dioceses and that for common words found truncated in the registers.