In 1620, twenty-two years after his death, Thomas Stapleton received the tribute hoped for, I suppose, by many, if not all professors. Four of his friends collected together his works and published them. His Opera Omnia fill four folio volumes: translation, controversy, the fruit of his years of lecturing worked over and set out in lengthy, ordered dissertations, history, biography, moral instruction, panegyric, speeches made on academic occasions, commentaries on the Sunday, feast-day and Lenten gospels. The whole was prefaced by a life of the author written in Latin verse by Henry Holland. The best preserved and best cared-for copy is to be found in Lambeth Palace library.

It has long been recognised that one of the most valuable documents about pluralism is the lengthy return of pluralists made in 1366 in accordance with a constitution of pope Urban V. In this return detailed information was sent in to archbishop Simon Langham by the various diocesans, containing the names of pluralists residing at the time in their dioceses, the value of their emoluments, their benefices and academic titles. It has an obvious value as a clergy-list, containing the names not only of several distinguished clerks who held office in the government service, but also of humbler men, as well as of that interesting class of university graduates to whom the acquisition of ecclesiastical benefices became a financial necessity.

Faced with the problem of ministering to the pastoral needs of a rapidly expanding Catholic population, the restored English hierarchy naturally turned its attention to the training of candidates for the priesthood. The immediate problem after 1850 was to devise a constitution for the three existing colleges or seminaries, and it is to this issue that historians have given most attention. Of greater importance, however, were the ideals and standards which the bishops laid down to guide those who were running the colleges, for here they were setting a pattern of training which determined what was to happen for almost a century. In general terms, they advocated a training which isolated the seminarians from contemporary developments in secular education and which was marked by a deep suspicion of the world; it reflected a very narrow view of theology, and was partly responsible for the failure to develop a commitment to continuing study after ordination in many of the clergy. The present article investigates some of these issues by examining the decrees of the provincial synods of Westminster and the situation in the new diocese of Liverpool under its energetic second bishop, Alexander Goss.