Welsh Journals

'horkyes' on p. 101 be organs rather than orphreys; or were such vestments, too, allowed?) The counties of Brecknock and Radnor and the hinterland of Swansea which form the modern diocese were part of a wider Church which from the eighth century retained close connections with England and Ireland (exemplified, for example, in the St. Michael dedications of the border country). And the archdeaconry of Brecon was the highest office held by Gerald of Wales-a district for which he 'came to feel a genuine affection' even if his efforts and energies were more often directed towards getting himself removed from it to higher things. Two essays continue the wider picture into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by tracing the history of dissent and of the beginnings of Methodism. Swansea in 1672 had the highest aggregate of noncon- formists in any parish in Wales; and perhaps the county of Brecknock made the greatest contribution in Wales to the leadership of both brands of Methodism, though the Thomas Coke who came out of Brecon was a high and unbending Anglican, and the county was not itself greatly affected by Methodism. The work of two bishops of St. David's, Samuel Horsley and Thomas Burgess, is the substance of an essay on schools and clerical education in the diocese in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Three somewhat discursive pieces are followed by a highly professional and condensed analysis of the 1851 Religious Census for the counties of Brecon and Radnor against the background of internal and external population movements. Nonconformity was dominant in both counties by the late-1820s, though the Baptists and Independents grew faster in Brecon and the Methodists in Radnor. The minority Anglicans at least continued to spend money on their churches, employing among others Pearson, Blomfield, Scott and Woodyer to stamp the mark of ecclesiology everywhere. Special attention is paid to Radnorshire restorations which, far from resulting from religious fervour, reforming zeal, increase in prosperity or growth in population, were often undertaken for no better reason than to keep pace with a neighbour. The formation of the new diocese, described in an epilogue, brings to a close a series of essays which, while not pretending to unity, has brought together writers of different ecclesiastical traditions and of different methods and approach. The reviewer and other non-Welsh readers would have found maps of the old diocese of St. David's and the new diocese of Swansea and Brecon more useful than one of Wesley's journeys throughout Wales, Wesley's own portrait, and two almost identical views of Brecon Cathedral. The cheapness of the volume is the result of generous grants-in-aid, but quality of production has been sacrificed in poor layout, uneven printing and a thoroughly confusing index. ROBERT DUNNING Victoria History of Somerset, Taunton.