Welsh Journals

OTHER PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS There is a strongly litigious flavour to volume X (1960) of the Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales. Mr. William Greenway describes, with his accustomed lucidity, the prolonged disputes surround- ing the election of David Martin as bishop of St. David's in 1293-6. This episode serves to illustrate both the procedure of episcopal elections in the thirteenth century and the growing centralization of papal govern- ment in the period following the fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Mr. Walter Morgan gives an account of a number of cases brought before the consistory courts of St. David's against churchwardens for failure to carry out the various duties incumbent upon their offices. The latter half of this article deals with the robust methods adopted by Ebenezer Morris, vicar of Llanelly, to prevent Nonconformist obstruction in parish vestry meetings of the payment of church rates in the years 1837-40. Mr. Morgan concludes that Morris's efforts were ultimately unavailing and merely served to exacerbate the sectarian bitterness of rural Wales. Owain Jones reviews the life and ideas of Rowland Williams, Vice-Principal of St. David's College, Lampeter, whose analysis of the views of the German theologian, Bunsen, on biblical criticism appeared in the famous Essays and Reviews of 1860. Williams's controversial theories on divine revelation helped to provoke the prosecution of the contributors by the ecclesiastical courts, one of the major intellectual crises of Victorian Britain. Geoffrey Rees contributes some details on the restoration of Llanbadam Fawr parish church in the years 1862-70. Finally, the Rev. D. Eifion Evans, in an article in Welsh, traces the role of the Lay Society in helping to extend the influence of the Oxford Movement in the diocese of Bangor in the 1850s. To the present reviewer, an interesting feature is that the Welsh character of the Society was emphasized from the outset, one of its leading members being Owen Wynne Jones (Glasynys). Although the influence of the Society rapidly waned in the years following the Nonconformist revival of 1859, Anglo- Catholicism continued to act as a nationalizing agency within the Church in Wales, as the later career of J. Arthur Price indicates. Professor A. H. Dodd was the president of the Cambrian Archaeological Association for 1959-60, and his presidential address, entitled 'Jack and his House', appears in volume CIX (1960) of Archaeologia Cambrensis. Professor Dodd offers many suggestive observations on the ways in which archaeological investigation of houses provides evidence for the historian of the economic development and social values of the past. This volume also includes three lengthy accounts of recent archaeological inquiry in various parts of Caernarvonshire. There is a description by Dr. H. N. Savory of the excavations conducted on the Dark Age hill-fort at Dinas Emrys, Beddgelert, in 1954-56, and lists the finds made on the site, mostly from the Sub-Roman period. Mr. Leslie Alcock analyses the