Adam Orleton successively held the sees of Hereford (1317–27), Worcester (1327–33), and Winchester (1333–45). Such progression was accounted exceptional in his day, recalling for the uncharitable the remote and unfortunate precedent of archbishop Stigand rather than that of the estimable Richard Poore about a century before. In any case, within a few years of Orleton's death double translations were not uncommon. So respected a pastoral bishop as John Thoresby was to move without repercussion from St. David's (1347–9), by way of Worcester (1349– 1352), to York (1352–73). In the fifteenth century the process was too common to merit remark, save by the unduly censorious, Gascoigne for instance, who had a barbed tale on the theme with a play on the posthumous translation of the newly sanctified. But Orleton's promotions provided excellent ammunition for the scurrilous, who ascribed them to mere greed.

Professor L. A. Stone, writing on the ‘educational revolution’ of the period 1560–1640, came to the conclusion that one of the ‘most striking characteristics of the English Puritans was their belief in the value of education as a weapon against the three great evils of Ignorance, Prophaneness and Idleness’. He found that a significant number of puritan gentry and merchants supported the ‘teaching of the three R's and religion to the many, and Latin and religion to the few’ through the many scholarships and foundations that appear in this period. One may, however, question Stone's contention that the Puritans' educational motives were tied to the inculcation of obedience to the established social and political order. It is more than likely that, by spreading the Word of God, defeating what he calls the aesthetic and emotional attractions of the counter-reformation, and establishing a truly protestant nation, Puritans sought to educate a breed of reformed men dedicated to the coming of the Kingdom of God in their own lifetime. This, conceivably, was what was meant by a genuinely learned and protestant society.

The early years of the twentieth century prior to the outbreak of World War I have been described as a period in which the Liberal Party was in a state of decline. One significant aspect of this decline was the deterioration of what in the late nineteenth century has been labelled as political nonconformity. Gladstone's statement that Nonconformists supplied the backbone of British Liberalism perhaps best symbolises the political significance of this group for the vitality of the Liberal Party.