The reform of the Northumbrian Church constitutes a predominant theme in much that Bede wrote in his later years. Recent analyses of his later biblical commentaries have confirmed this, although a tendency remains to treat his historiographic masterpiece, theEcclesiastical history of the English people, completed in c. 731, as only aloofly reformist in outlook. This article contests such a view through an analysis of the narrative and characters of book iv, which when scrutinised can be seen to amplify some of the key reform-oriented issues voiced in Bede's last and most openly reformist work, theLetter to Egbert.