Welsh Journals

comings, it brilliantly illuminates upper-class life at many points. Welsh history is nothing if not social history and it cannot but be enriched by Professor Stone's findings on a whole spectrum of subjects central to an understanding of the landowning classes. Admittedly, only two or three aristocratic families resided in Wales and not many others had any con- nexion with the country. But much of what is here investigated in rich and revealing detail-phenomena like the implementing of royal power, office- holding, clientage, estate management, investment, education, marriage, and a host of other related issues ranging from the mania for genealogy to the effect of the introduction of the rapier on the aristocratic death-rate-is as germane to an understanding of the county gentry as to the aristocracy. Applied with intelligence and the appropriate adjustment, it can greatly extend and deepen our understanding of the Welsh scene. But readers who want to follow through the clues in detail and at source be warned: to do this they will have to turn to that monumental original volume. The prospect need not deter them; they will find the experience both a stimulus and a pleasure. GLANMOR WILLIAMS Swansea THE CIVIL WAR. By Richard Atkyns and John Gwyn. Edited by Peter Young and Norman Tucker. Longmans, 1967. Pp. xii, 129. 30s. This attractively produced volume is one of a series devoted to first- hand accounts of famous military campaigns. What makes it particularly inviting is that it consists of the reminiscences of two royalist junior officers, a class of warrior not commonly disposed to memoir-writing. The texts are nicely balanced with excellent introductions and technical appendices. In addition, the volume is prefaced by a useful chronology and concludes with short military biographies of relevant individuals. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the texts themselves do not wholly live up to either the expectations of the reader or the critical energy expended on them by their editors. For Captain Richard Atkyns, the service he saw in the Western Army must have been the only relief from an otherwise disastrous career-or so he would have us believe. When he enlisted at the age of about 28, he had already failed as an academic, lawyer and courtier; soon after he ceased fighting, his estate was sequestered by the Long Parliament. After the Restoration, despite service as deputy-lieutenant and J.P. for Gloucester- shire, he failed to satisfy the expectations of either his wife or his creditors and must have died a broken man. Indeed, his fame rests entirely on a