While writing this book I have accumulated obligations to a host of friends and colleagues who have offered insight, advice, information, expertise, hospitality or merely an indulgent ear – Dr Ian Arthurson, Mr T. Cooper, Dr David Crankshaw, Professor Pat Collinson, Dr Beat Kumin, Dr Joanna Mattingly, Professor John Morrill and and Ms Helen Weinstein. I owe special debts of gratitude to Sir David and Lady Calcutt for hospitality on Exmoor and for the sight of an archdeacon chasing someone else's hat, to Jim and Mabel Vellacott of Bampton and Morebath – Jim and Mabel ‘at Wode’ – who walked and talked me round the farms of Morebath, to Richard and Caryl Rothwell of Little Timewell for access to the estate map of Morebath Manor, to Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch for making me think twice, to Dr Neil Jones for unrivalled expertise in Tudor law, to Professor Nicholas Boyle, who read every word and commented constructively on almost all of them, and to Dr C. S. Knighton who also read the typescript. I thank them all. Professor Nicholas Orme has been from the beginning of this project a generous and supportive friend. A glance at the footnotes will reveal how often I have borrowed from his deep knowledge of the religious history of Devon. In addition he has been a tireless source of hospitality, information and guidance, and a healthily sceptical reader: this would have been a far poorer book without him.
The Bethune-Baker fund of the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity and the Morshead-Salter fund of Magdalene College made research grants. John Nicoll and Sally Salvesen at Yale have again proved themselves peerless publishers and warm friends, and Margot Levy was a thorough and intelligent copy editor. I am grateful to the Rector of Bampton and the Devon County Archivist for permission to reproduce pages from the Morebath account-book, and I am grateful for the efficiency and cooperation of the staffs of the Devon Record Office, the Somerset Record Office, and the West Country Studies library. The final stages of the book were completed as McCarthy Professor at the Gregorian University, Rome, in the gracious setting of the Collegio Irlandese, where I was welcomed with truly Hibernian kindness by Monsignor John Fleming, Rector, and his staff and students.
Finally, I thank my wife Jenny, best support of all, who has borne heroically with marriage to Sir Christopher Trychay.