Welsh Journals

the house inherited much of the saint's spiritualities and temporalities. Again on the theme of place-names, B. G. Charles, drawing on a variety of source-material, examines the English element in the barony and lordship of Laugharne. Professor Glanmor Williams's lucid and percep- tive analysis of the place of Carmarthen in the early years of the Reformation has a much wider appeal. The town's size, prosperity, site, trade, social structure, and the fact that, from the days of William Barlow onwards, the bishops of St. David's had a residence at Abergwili, made it a natural centre for controversy and the exchange of reforming ideas and doctrines, and a focus of religious change in a diocese which was the first in Wales to feel the full impact of Reformation changes. The social structure of eighteenth-century Pembrokeshire gentry forms the subject of David Howell's substantial contribution, in which he examines the main county families, the size and value of their landed property, estate management, inheritance and economy, local politics and government, and the relations between landlord and tenant. Three other praiseworthy articles appear in this volume, namely Michael Evans's contribution on the iron industry at Coedmor, Llechryd; B. G. Owens's sensitive discussion of the career, records and diaries of the Rev. Hugh William Jones, pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, Carmarthen, between 1835 and 1873; and Nigel Yates's important examination of the limited impact of the Oxford Movement on the parishes of south-west Wales. The breadth and variety of the scholarship contained in this volume not only make it a remarkable and fitting tribute to Major Francis Jones but also a valuable contribution to the history of Dyfed. J. G. JONES Cardiff LIST OF WELSH ENTRIES IN THE MEMORANDA ROLLS, 1282-1343. Edited by Natalie Fryde. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1974. Pp. xxix, 134. £ 2.00. The historical value of the Memoranda Rolls has long been recognized: they are particularly useful to Welsh historians during the age of the Edwards when Wales loomed especially large in the eyes of administrators. Mrs. Fryde has performed a useful service in listing the Welsh entries from 1282 to 1343. Some insight is given into the general ethos of the Exchequer: its long memory is illustrated by its investigations of the financial consequences of Madog's rising long after its suppression, while other entries show how its unforgiving nature could lead it to tyrannize over former officials. The Remembrancers who compiled the rolls were so centrally placed in the Exchequer's extensive activities that their records include much incidental information about individuals and matters which at first sight seem unlikely to figure in purely financial memoranda. There are many references to Welsh prisoners and hostages, and a note (in 1327-28) of the payment of a pension to Gwenllian, daughter of Llywelyn the Last, as a middle-aged nun of Sempringham. The volume is, of course, intended as a key to the use of the rolls themselves. Not all the entries are