With this volume, a great scholarly endeavour takes one more step towards its eventual aim; the publication of all the material relating to Britain and Ireland found in the papal registers down to Henry viii’s break with Rome in 1534. With this volume also Alan Macquarrie picks up the editorial baton formerly carried by Michael Haren. The scope of the materials found here will be no surprise to those familiar with earlier volumes: dispensations for plurality or from various impediments, unions of benefices, provisions, pensions etc, as well as occasional interventions in ecclesiastical litigation. The collection therefore opens one more gallery in this mine of biographical information on British and Irish clergymen, from the virtually unknown through to the big-ticket pluralists. As ever, the indexing is thorough and helpful (though some identifications are missed – for example, Geoffrey Evarton of London, who appears just once, is clearly the same as the often-mentioned Geoffrey Wharton). (And it is regrettable that in a work in which orthography is so crucial, St Aelred has been attributed to ‘Riveaulx’, instead of Rievaulx, at the end of the foreword.) There is another volume of material still to be published from Clement's pontificate, but this volume at least (on a far from rigorous sampling) seems to give some indication that English business reached Rome in rather diminished quantities from about 1525 until 1529 – the heyday of Cardinal Wolsey's legatine jurisdiction. But any systematic analysis of business levels must await the appearance of the few volumes in the series still to be published. In the meantime, scholars of ecclesiastical history remain grateful to the Irish Manuscripts Commission for steering towards completion the project initiated over a century ago by HMSO.