The study concentrates on the attitudes and policies of those prelates installed in the years before 1783, between 1783 and 1812, between 1812 and 1830, and finally between 1830 and 1852. Professor Soloway also examines their social connections, showing the predominantly aristocratic nature of the Church's leadership in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He emphasises the importance of the role of these men in guiding, administering and reforming the established Church in a period of unprecedented economic and social change.