Welsh Journals

Record Office and the Cardiff Public Library, and of the interesting excavations now being conducted at Penmaen, in the Gower peninsula. The Transactions of the Radnorshire Society appeared in 1960 for the thirtieth successive year, accompanied this time by a useful index covering the volumes from 1931 to 1956. Mr. Francis G. Payne discusses in the latest number the life and work of John Lewis of Llwynweyne (71540-1615), historian and antiquary, omnivorous collector of medieval manuscripts, patron of bards and wandering minstrels. Lewis's career serves to remind us of the effect of the Tudor administrative changes (the term 'revolution' being now out of favour) in stimulating interest among the Welsh gentry in the traditions and antiquities of their native land. Mr. Payne concludes with admirable belligerency that 'in losing its native language the county lost its memory of almost everyone of genius or of interest it had produced up to the end of the 18th century' and appeals to the Radnorshire Society to remedy this intellectual amnesia. The editor, Mr. C. W. Newman, provides a note on Shelley's attempts to purchase Nant-gwyllt, near Rhayader, between 1812 and 1815, and his vain effort to establish it as 'the asylum of distressed virtue, the rendezvous of the friends of liberty and truth' in Radnor's green and pleasant land. The venture failed, as the result of Shelley's financial naivety, the hesitations of his family and his liaison with Mary Godwin, but Mr. Newman's narrative makes for racy reading. Other contributions include Mr. W. H. Howse's account of the duties of sheriff's officers in the seventeenth century, as shown by two indentures of 1666 and 1687; Mr. A. D. Powell's description, based on Star Chamber Proceedings, of the highly spectacular lawsuits of John Robert of Cabalva; and Mr. W. H. Pye's illustrated note on a collection of flints (mainly arrow-heads) discovered at Lloyney Farm, Clyro. The appended list of over 250 members of the Radnorshire Society makes sobering reading for those resident in the affluent but historically apathetic coalfield of Morgannwg. KENNETH O. MORGAN. Swansea. II. NORTH WALES Only three volumes of North Wales transactions have come to hand since our last issue. Pride of place on this occasion must go to Caernarvonshire. The Historical Society in that county first came into existence in April 1938 with a membership, in its foundation year, of 199, of whom sixty-seven are still to be found among the 1,000 and more to which it has now swollen. None of the founders played a more effective role than the Society's first secretary, the late Gwilym T. Jones, clerk to the Caernarvonshire County Council, in memory of whom the Society established a memorial fund. Very appropriately, the first fruits of that fund have been devoted to produce an enlarged volume of the Transactions,