Welsh Journals

else. B. E. Howells analyses the social characteristics of the Elizabethan squirearchy as a self-conscious class. All will wish this new venture every success. By way of contrast, the Transactions of the Radnorshire Society appeared in 1959 for the twenty-ninth successive year, and continues to present an attractive appearance. The major feature this time is an account, based on published sources, by F. Noble, of the settlement of Radnorshire men, largely Quakers and Baptists, in the colony of Pennsylvania in the seventeenth century. While not free from the famous 'filio-pietistic element of so many contributions on emigration from Europe, this forms a useful addition to literature on the important and still largely unexplored connection between Wales and the New World. K.O.M. II. NORTH WALES Volume LV, part II (1958) of the Montgomeryshire Collections, much the most senior publication of its kind in Wales, appeared in March 1960. Its editor, Dr. R. U. Sayce, is concerned in the current issue to infuse new energy into the writing of parish and commote histories within the county. To this end he has induced the National Librarian, Mr. E. D. Jones, to write a most useful summary of 'Sources for Montgomeryshire parish histories in the National Library of Wales', an example which other editors of county transactions could profitably follow. Dr. Sayce has himself compiled 'further queries, hints and suggestions for the study of local history in Powys-land'. Thoughtful and set out with clarity, these notes give helpful guidance to would-be parish historians, though they are inclined to be somewhat conservative in their approach in emphasizing institutions rather than communities as the focus of interest. For the rest, the contributions are mainly antiquarian and architectural in their interest. Messrs. Peter Smith and Vaughan Owen have a valuable article on late Stuart and early Georgian half-timbered houses, to which Mr. Hague adds an interesting appendix on the old Pack-horse Inn at Welshpool, a half-timbered building of Elizabethan date. Mr. J. D. K. Lloyd applies his ingenuity and knowledge to the intriguing problems of the reconstruction of Montgomery Town Hall and its architect, and Mr. W. A. Griffiths traces three benefactors of Guilsfield parish. Flintshire Historical Society Publications, 18 (1960) also devotes considerable space to antiquarian and architectural articles in its current number. Canon Ellis Davies describes Caerwys Church, and Mr. Peter Smith presents a report on the Jacobean house, Plas Teg, which at the time of preparing the report seemed doomed but has since been reprieved. Excavations on an older plas, Hen Bias, at Coleshill Fawr, are described