This is a study of the sixty-six bishops who held office during the reign of James I. Kenneth Fincham surveys their range of activities and functions, including their part in central politics, their role in local society, their work as diocesan governors enforcing moral and spiritual discipline, and their supervision of the parish clergy. Dr Fincham argues that the accession of James I marked the restoration of episcopal fortunes at court and in the localities, seen most clearly in the revival of the court prelate.

This detailed analysis of the early seventeenth-century episcopate, intensively grounded in contemporary sources, reveals much about the church of James I, the doctrinal divisions of the period, and the origins of Laudian government in the 1630s. Prelate as Pastor offers a new perspective on the controversies of early Stuart religious history.