Welsh Journals

nor are her attempts to impugn its authority (as compared with Mancini) wholly convincing. Finally, it should be added that, by concentrating on the narrative sources for the reign, Mrs. Hanham inadvertently conveys the impression that our knowledge of its events is less than it need be. There is, in fact, a great deal of surviving evidence from record material which can be used to amplify, correct, or refute the statements of the chroniclers: for example, the 'Crowland Chronicle"s emphasis on the importance of northerners in Richard's government can be fully sub- stantiated by such means. Nevertheless, Mrs. Hanham's searching critique of source material has made hers a book which every serious student of King Richard III must needs possess. Its high price is, alas, a sign of the times. CHARLES ROSS Bristol WELSH BAPTIST STUDIES. Edited by Mansel John. The South Wales Baptist College, 1976. Pp. 107. [no price] In his introductory note the editor explains that these articles are intended to make available to students unable to read Welsh recent scholarly work on Welsh Baptist history. Professor Glanmor Williams prefaces the volume with a sympathetic appreciation of the beliefs of sixteenth-century continental Anabaptists. Welsh Particular Baptists of the mid-seventeenth century certainly shared the Anabaptists' aversion to infant baptism and their emphasis on the necessity for baptism only of adult believers, but the other essays in this book demonstrate how far in almost all other matters of theology these Welsh Baptists were from their sixteenth-century continental namesakes. The three following essays concentrate upon Calvinist Baptist history in south and mid-Wales in the seventeenth century and make a most interesting contribution to denominational, local and, indeed, social history. With constant reference to the Ilston church book, Dr. R. B. White describes the foundation of the Calvinist Baptist churches in south Wales during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. His forms the longest and most substantial essay in the book and will surely become required reading for all ecclesiastical historians of the mid-seventeenth century. He shows how the scattered and often tiny groups of south Wales Baptists were held together in one fellowship largely through the missionary activity of John Miles, who succeeded in linking the different congre- gations without undermining their congregational independence. Miles's achievement came about through his readiness to build upon local talents and to make use of 'gifted' lay officers which worked against any emergence of a ministerial caste. Dr. Tudur Jones chronicles the last decade in the life of Vavasor Powell rather more briefly. So apprehensive were the authorities of the influence of Powell's millenarian beliefs in both Wales and London that they permitted him only ten months of freedom outside prison in his final ten years. Perhaps on another occasion Dr. Tudur Jones