Welsh Journals

at times. The Anglo-Welsh problem, for example, might have repaid closer study, especially in view of the fact that men with Welsh-sounding names held the offices of mayor and bailiffs of Monmouth in the 1490s. Did Monmouth 'go native' in the later middle ages? If so, how typical was it of other places in that exposed corner of south-east Wales where English influence was at its strongest? The book invites such criticism, however, not so much because of the author's shortcomings as the difficulty of writing a history of a community from largely peripheral sources. With the material at his disposal, and given the fairly limited objectives he seems to have set himself, Mr. Kissack has done as well as could possibly be hoped for, particularly with the earlier part of the history. He clearly knows Monmouth like the back of his hand, and manages to convey his delight in its history to the reader. His touch is surer when dealing with religious developments, but the book as a whole will surely be plundered by other scholars for-if nothing else-the mass of useful information it contains. K. WILLIAMS-JONES Bangor CARMARTHENSHIRE STUDIES: ESSAYS PRESENTED TO MAJOR FRANCIS JONES. Edited by Tudor Barnes and Nigel Yates. Carmarthenshire County Council, Carmarthen, 1974. Pp. xiv, 266. £ 1.95. Carmarthenshire County Council and the editors of this volume are to be warmly congratulated for publishing a number of substantial contri- butions in honour of Major Francis Jones, Wales Herald Extraordinary and, until his recent retirement in March 1974, the first and only Carmarthenshire County Archivist. The prime feature of this handsomely- produced volume is its variety and richness of historical material, which reflects not only Major Jones's wide-ranging interests in history, genealogy and archaeology, but also the painstaking researches and scholarship of a number of scholars in their respective fields of study. After a fitting introduction by Sir Anthony Wagner, Garter Principal King of Arms, John Little shows how the historian's knowledge and understanding of Roman Carmarthenshire have increased considerably since the publication of J. E. Lloyd's History of Carmarthenshire in 1935, and how subsequent excavations at Carmarthen and at native settlements in the area have necessitated a change of view concerning the extent and nature of the Roman occupation of Dyfed. Tudor Barnes reviews the record collections at the Carmarthen repository and draws attention to the variety of its public and private muniments, including the rich collection of Cawdor papers. An interesting section on domestic archi- tecture in Dyfed by Peter Smith outlines, with the aid of line-drawings and photographs, the most significant features of a number of medieval and renaissance houses in the area. The late Professor Melville Richards, in a short study of the Carmarthenshire possessions of the Premonstra- tensian abbey of Talyllychau, firmly concludes that the lands granted to it by the royal line of Dinefwr correspond to the St. Teilo patria and that