Welsh Journals

The book begins with a survey of thinking about the state, hierarchy, obedience, and rebellion. Most of it, however, is concerned with economic problems, and the attitudes to them of intellectuals. Mr. Jones stresses the co-existence of two divergent modes of thought: on the one hand, the moralizing approach, that economic problems are due to greed, that men must be exhorted to be better or punished for being wicked: on the other, the frank acceptance of acquisitiveness as a feature of human nature, and the attempt to frame society so that self-seeking is channelled into socially beneficial ends. As examples of the second approach he cites the suggestions (in the Policies to Reduce this Realm unto a Prosperous Wealth and Estate, and in the Discourse of the Common Weal) that the best way to stimulate grain production would be to abandon artificial attempts to hold down the price. Nevertheless, as he concedes, this strand was the more unusual, significant rather as prefiguring late seventeenth- century developments than in immediate application. He is, indeed, always ready to stress the variety of contemporary thinkers. Even on rebellion there were dissident voices: Tyndale and Hooper stressing the misdeeds of the governing classes as much as the disobedience of the poor, Goodman and Ponet even prepared to justify rebellion in certain circumstances. My main criticism would be that Mr. Jones is inclined to treat his thinkers too indulgently, to value them too much at their own estimation. For instance, he is somewhat embarrassed by the act prescribing slavery as a punishment for refusal to work, passed in 1547, when the influence of the 'Commonwealth party' was great. He prefers to see the 'Common- wealth tradition' as 'more faithfully reflected in the draft of 1535', apparently forgetting that public forced-labour was an essential part of that scheme too. Admittedly, the balance of emphasis between repression and alleviation varied from scheme to scheme, but almost all constructive thought about poverty at this time combined increased penalties for the allegedly work-shy with better provision for the unfortunate. Or again, the traditional contrast between Protector Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland is perhaps too uncritically accepted. Nevertheless, Mr. Jones has produced a useful survey of a fascinating period in the history of social thought. It will now need unusual ingenuity to extract much more from this particular mine. Future prospectors might be well advised to look elsewhere. (Why not, for instance, at the Elizabethan period in this connection?) C. S. L. DAVIES Wadham College, Oxford REFORMATION VIEWS OF CHURCH HISTORY. By Glanmor Williams. Ecumenical Studies in History, no. 11. Lutterworth Press, London, 1970. Pp. 80. 80p. Reformation specialists, historians and theologians alike usually neglect or underestimate the significance of the appeal to history made by the