Over the past generation, historians of the Reformation era have been concerned with how religious change happened through what Ethan Shagan calls popular politics. As far as England is concerned, the consensus is that one can have neither a top-down nor bottom-up model for reform, but rather a dynamic interchange that takes bishops and the common sort into account. In other words, we need studies of saints’ cults by Eamon Duffy and of the Marian bishops by David Loades. Historians are therefore indebted to the meticulous analysis of the episcopate in the reign of Elizabeth Tudor by the late Brett Usher, former associate editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. His research bore two volumes, both for the St. Andrew’s Studies series from Ashgate: the first appeared in 2003 and examined the period from 1559 to 1577; this second volume, appearing in 2016, continues the study to the end of the reign in 1603. In both cases Usher gives us William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as the central player in forming the Elizabethan episcopate, and likewise in both books he pushes against several common perceptions of both the government and the bench.

As one might guess, the role of Archbishop John Whitgift is in Usher’s sights. His conclusion is that that epitome of conformity did not, as is commonly perceived, rule the roost. In getting men on the bench Whitgift had to contend with Burghley, lord treasurer of England from 1572 until his death in 1598 and Elizabeth’s top minister for forty years. Here Usher sifts through the way Whitgift’s story is usually told. The image of Elizabeth’s “little black husband,” the archbishop who alone drove the campaign for conformity with the other bishops in tow, has been recycled too many times. Usher argues that this image must give way to one in which Burghley is the lynchpin figure, though not without serious challenges from other courtiers. Christopher Hatton, likewise, has his narrative challenged. Usher’s analysis shows that the “Hattonian reaction,” a conservative swing after the fall of Archbishop Grindal for not suppressing the prophesyings in 1577, has perhaps been overrated. After the elevations of Whitgift and a small handful of other conservatives around 1580, he did not critically influence the bench—this despite Puritan disdain for the lord chancellor.

Usher also challenges the narrative that Elizabeth really wanted celibate clerics as bishops with the fact that less than a third of the men she elevated to the episcopate were unmarried; Matthew Hutton, her last archbishop of York, was married three times! There is, Usher continues, no substance to the notion that Elizabeth’s government intentionally elevated older men, already consecrated for other sees, expecting shorter tenures to get more “first fruits” (a payment to the Crown). Then there is the story that Elizabeth kept sees vacant to keep the profits. A careful analysis of the data shows that on somewhere between twenty-three and thirty occasions the Crown received no sede vacante profits and there was a trend over the reign toward shorter vacancies. Moreover, only twenty-one of the seventy-five bishops were ever translated, and only six of those twenty-one were moved twice. Even at the end of the reign the candidates averaged in their forties and fifties; they were men in their prime filled with energy and experience rather than, as Usher puts it, facing their dotage. These were not avaricious timeservers, but spirited pastors. According to Usher, this was largely the work of Burghley.

Usher also provides three remarkable indexes tracing elevations and the relationship with the Exchequer. These reflect the nature of the book itself: it is a meticulous study of archival details. On that count, this is a superior work. However, the book may have benefited from a sustained engagement with the theological vision of these men. Usher’s conclusion is that Burghley had, at the end of his days, achieved the “broad church” for which he had fought since 1559, a church in which only Oxbridge common rooms were affected by theological disputes. Even accepting a Calvinist consensus, one wonders about popular politics and an evaluation of the state of the church based on the bishops. Notwithstanding, it should be noted that this is Usher’s swan song, having died of pancreatic cancer in 2013. The book is prefaced by a touching homage by Kenneth Fincham describing how Usher the actor became involved in archival research; he details his collegiality, which was evidently offset by his excoriations of works he judged inferior. With debts to the scholarship of Patrick Collinson and Peter Lake, among others, and with rhetorical flourishes of language exhibiting his formation in drama, Usher’s analysis stands as a helpful addition to a series of works on episcopal leadership in early modern England.