Welsh Journals

was not creating an embryonic nation-state but a viable feudal territory over which they could exercise practical control. The same, mutatis mutandis, would be true of Owain Glyn Dwr. He, after all, had ambitions to include large parts of the English-speaking border in his principality, if the terms of the Tri-partite Indenture and the 'Pennal policy' had any real meaning. This is not to argue that the facts of geography had no effect on the policies of these Welsh leaders but that they worked in a way rather different from that suggested by Professor Bowen. Again, the distinction between the geographical characteristics of Inner and Outer Wales and their cultural links and affiliations is obviously an important one and cannot be ignored. But the historical consequences that follow are nothing like as clear-cut or as inevitable as Professor Bowen seems to argue. It is perfectly true, of course, that the Normans overran and permanently held much of southern and eastern Wales. Yet the political control they exercised there and the links they established with England were not decisive in shaping the social and cultural life of those areas. To take but one outstanding example: the Vale of Glamorgan. Geographically, it is an extension of the Lowland Zone of Britain into Wales; it was one of the parts of south Wales first conquered by the Normans; thereafter, it never formed part of a Welsh principality; its political, religious, and economic links were nearly all with the west of England. On the strength of Professor Bowen's argument it ought to have been, linguistically and culturally, one of the most non-Welsh parts of Wales. Yet we know from the late Professor Griffith John Williams's splendid study of the literary tradition of Glamorgan that it was, in fact, as far as the Welsh language and literature went, one of the most vigorous and productive provinces of Wales until the nineteenth century. The anglicization of this and other regions in Outer Wales is much more recent than is commonly supposed and owes as much-perhaps more- to historical as geographical causes. In passing it might appropriately be observed that no serious historico-sociological study of the decline of the Welsh language has yet been undertaken. It is difficult, too, to accept without serious qualification the argument that the distinction between Outer and Inner Wales has been maintained and exemplified in the religious history of modern Wales. This has as its implication that only 'Welsh-rooted' sects and denominations have flourished in Inner Wales, whereas in Outer Wales English importations have done reasonably well. This is a hypothesis which makes it very difficult to explain the vigour of 'English' Quakerism in that heart of conservative Inner Wales-Merioneth and west Montgomery-or the persistence of 'Welsh' recusancy in that extremity of Outer Wales- Monmouthshire. And if the hypothesis fits Daniel Rowland's Methodism in Llangeitho it doesn't help very much with Howell Harris's highly successful evangelizing in south-east Wales. Here again it might be