Welsh Journals

in such a small space covers an extremely wide subject. It is, indeed, a tour de force; but by its very brevity it requires of the user very careful reading and digestion. To cover the whole range of administrative, judicial and pastoral records which have emerged in an ever-widening stream from the provincial and diocesan registries of the Church of England (though not Wales) from the thirteenth century to the present day is an enormous task. It is a highly specialised field in which technical terms abound, where legal jargon is at its most rampant. Mrs. Owen, with her vast experience and knowledge of two of the most fruitful registries in the country, Lincoln and Ely, has mastered the difficulties in an extraordinary way, and at the same time has provided references to most of the important secondary works on the topics under discussion. But the abundance of a Lincoln or an Ely is not universal, and users should be prepared to find fewer records in other places. Equally, it was not possible to deal in any detail with the often great differences in practice between one diocese and another. These are real problems which a student of ecclesiastical history needs to have answered, and in a larger work this could have been done. Mrs. Owen could not be expected to have studied any other diocese in depth within the size of the present volume, so that some of her general statements about the survival of records may have to be modified as more local lists, on the lines of the present series, become available. Thus, for example, there is a significant number of glebe terriers for 1571 in Bath and Wells diocese to add to those of Carlisle, Lincoln and Worcester (p. 24). Enforced brevity has its drawbacks, and to the terse entry for the same diocese under 'Location of Records' (p. 58) should be added that the original episcopal registers are still in the custody of the diocesan registrar at Wells. It is unlikely that anyone but Mrs. Owen could have carried out this difficult brief so well. The subjects under consideration for future volumes in this series vary widely in scope and significance, and it is to be hoped that authors of similarly wide and technical subjects may be given more than sixty-four pages in which to do justice to their subjects with a little more thought for the user. Mrs. Owen will be a difficult author to follow; it is to be hoped that she will one day give us a larger work on the same subject, including Wales. ROBERT W. DUNNING Victoria County History of Somerset BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BRITISH HISTORY: STUART PERIOD, 1603-1714. Edited by Godfrey Davies, first edition; Mary Frear Keeler, second edition. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970. Pp. xxxv, 734. £ 5.00. The second edition of this work, scoring 610 pages without the index against its predecessor's 385, reflects the labour of a generation of scholar-