Welsh Journals

doyen is above the storm. Significantly, these pages contain no lapidary comment on the concept of 'Tudor despotism' on which the Professor wrote a book over thirty years ago. Such a modest reticence reckoned without the whirligig of fashion in historical interpretations. By a curious irony of historiography that early canard has now come home to roost, for even as this volume went through the press Professor Joel Hursfield was plotting a revival of 'Tudor despotism'. And so, not lacking fuel, the debate continues. P. R. ROBERTS University of Kent CALENDAR OF THE RECORDS OF THE BOROUGH OF HAVERFORDWEST, 1539-1660. Edited by B. G. Charles. Board of Celtic Studies, University of Wales, History and Law Series, No. XXIV. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1967. Pp. viii, 274. 55s. A CALENDAR OF LETTERS RELATING TO NORTH WALES, 1533- circa 1700. Edited by B. E. Howells. Board of Celtic Studies, University of Wales, History and Law Series, No. XXIII. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1967. Pp. x, 287. 50s. Haverfordwest has one of the best collections of borough records in Wales for the early modern period; and the documents edited by Dr. B. G. Charles give an interesting picture of the life of the town. It was a small community of 2-3,000 inhabitants, apparently rather introverted and suspicious of outsiders: 'no foreigners shall be burgesses but. be always called foreigners'. Occasionally, even in the years before the civil wars, there were signs of social and political stress. Savage regulations for the poor ordered that vagrant children of seven years or more should be whipped and returned to their places of birth, often presumably to be separated from parents and siblings. An order of 1636 'for the orderly placing of men and women in seats in the church of St. Maries' was seemingly devised because 'maids and such as are unmarried have, without authority, crept into the pews'. In 1630 a new regulation was made to punish persons making 'unseemly gesture or bad speeches' derogatory of the mayor or his office. Most interesting of all is an ordinance of the same year which begins with this fine flourish: 'whereas it appears by the great charter of England and the petition of both houses granted by the King's Majesty this last parliament that freedom of person is one of the greatest inheritance of the subjects of this realm It goes on to regulate the power of imprisonment wielded by local officers. Such rhetorical statements of national principle are, in my experience, rare in borough records. However, the bulk of these papers comes from the years after 1642, especially from the Interregnum. They are exceptionally revealing about the impact of war on a local community. Taxation was heavy and