Those writing at the time, and subsequent historians, have tended to exaggerate the importance of the tenth-century monastic revival and of the reform movement which followed the Norman Conquest. During each period contemporary writers glorified the achievements of the reformation, of which they themselves were products, and belittled or even denigrated the religious life of the preceding era. This was partly because the hallmark of both reformations was the strict enforcement of the Rule of Benedict; the ideal of strict Benedictinism appealed to those writing during the reformations, since they themselves were strict Benedictines, and it has appealed to some historians in our own day. One result has been a tendency to emphasise the influence of continental models so much that it overshadows the importance of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. David Knowles makes continental influence on the tenth-century revival the theme of chapter 1 of his The Monastic Order in England.

The immediate responsibility for the spiritual well-being of the parish in the early sixteenth century lay with the priest who had the living. Patrons of church livings were able, however, to influence parochial care by extending their patronage to priests who would be certain to maintain their cures satisfactorily. While the patron had no legal obligation to ensure the proper execution of parochial duties by his appointee, a certain degree of responsibility would be expected of men like Sir Thomas More, who allied themselves with the defence of the clerical estate while denouncing the personal or professional shortcomings of many of its members.

On 8 December 1527 two scholars, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, carried penitential faggots at St Paul's Cross as a token of abjuration of heresy. With this act both men formally cleansed their souls and brought about their reconciliation with the Church. Far from being the end of a story, however, this ceremony proved to be the beginning of a controversy which has survived until the present day. For Thomas Bilney subsequently renounced his abjuration and became a significant figure in the early Reformation in England, eventually dying at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1531. And yet, despite the importance attributed to him as a reformer, Bilney is now, as he was then, an ambiguous figure whose relationship with the Catholic Church and precise beliefs have never been conclusively determined. Many writers have claimed Bilney as a champion of their particular causes or have sought to identify his place in the wider movements of the Reformation. For the Protestant John Foxe he was a martyr, albeit a flawed one, for the reformed faith, who refused to the last to be intimidated into a second abjuration. For Sir Thomas More, in somewhat mischievous mood, he was a Catholic saint brought to realise the error of his ways at the stake and reconciled to the Church with almost his last breath.

The history of Anglican temperance movements before the First World War reveals working-class influences on English vicarages (not yet recognised by historians) and a corresponding influence of the lower clergy on the Anglican establishment. A study of Anglican initiatives against drink may help provide missing links between the Biblethumping evangelicalism of wine-drinking William Wilberforce's time and the social gospel era of his grandsons, the clerical teetotallers, Basil and Ernest. After 1855, a significant minority of Anglican clergymen, obsessed with the estrangement of the lower orders from organised religion, accepted teetotalism, often at the urging of labourers. In so doing, they reversed somewhat the proposition enshrined in the evangelical tradition that true moral reform depended on the leadership of the privileged classes and the compliance of their social inferiors. Working-class teetotallers continued to exercise influence in parochial temperance organisations; more ambitiously, low-placed teetotal clergymen attempted, through the Church's teetotal society, to convert the highest Anglican dignitaries to total abstinence.