Welsh Journals

probably command less acceptance, especially Professor Lander's reassess- ment of the 'ramshackle structure' of early-Tudor monarchy (pp. 42, 72- 73). His belief (p. 56) that the consequences of the Wars of the Roses were transitory, and that the power of the English nobility remained unimpaired is ill-founded. His comparison between the state of Henry VII's finances and estimates of the revenues subsequently enjoyed by Francis I (1514-47) of France and the Emperor Charles V is also misleading. The strength of English kingship is Henry VII's later years was a striking contrast to the bankrupt regime of the last phase of Lancastrian rule, and the English higher nobility was politically much weaker at the end of the fifteenth century than their predecessors had been in 1450. If the political upheavals in late-fifteenth-century England had (p. 68) 'no significant effect on the numbers and wealth of the English landed classes', it becomes more difficult to explain (p. 55) how Henry VII was able to get away with 'his terrorization of a large section of the peerage by bonds and recognisances'. The ablest of the Tudor rulers has been given little credit for the wise precautions that ensured the peaceful accession of the young and inexperi- enced Henry VIII. T. B. PUGH Southampton THE GENERAL AND COMMON SORT OF PEOPLE, 1540-1640. By Glanmor Williams. University of Exeter, 1977. Pp. 32. n.p. Professor Williams's Harte Memorial Lecture, given in 1975, provides a useful conspectus on a fast expanding field of study. He provides a brief survey of social groups and indicates how both old and new sorts of evidence are being exploited to construct a living history of the common people. His illustrations are drawn from Britain generally (including a grim description of Scottish housing conditions in 1679), but naturally he speaks with a Welsh accent; so cwndidau are pressed into service to show the popular view of the poor law. Joan Thirsk's thesis about pastoral farming and rural industry is examined for Carmarthenshire, and Sir John Wynn is cited for deaths from hunger in Caernarvonshire in 1623. The subject is growing so rapidly that some of the gaps, noticed in the lecture, are already beginning to be filled; the social history of crime in the period, for instance. Oddly, there is no mention of two subjects which, after many false starts, seem about to take off: the histories of women and of children. The most important part of Professor Williams's lecture, however, is the last: his insistence on the need for 'identifiable human beings' as well as 'abstract generalizations'. Historians too easily tempted by spurious sociological categorizations should take note. C. s. L. DAVIES Wadham College, Oxford THE SHERIFFS OF THE COUNTY OF PEMBROKE, 1541-1974. Compiled by Dillwyn Miles. Haverfordwest, 1976. Pp. 109. £ 3.95. In this most useful publication, Major Francis Jones writes a foreword