Welsh Journals

A. D. Powell provides a miscellany of extracts from documents among the public records relating to Radnorshire and the adjoining Marches from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, in Trans. Radnorshire Soc., XLVI, 28-36. R. A. Griffiths argues that the circumstances of Richard, duke of York's landing in Wales in 1450 reflect the role of the king's household in north Wales, in the polity of late-Lancastrian England and, most notably, in those events that precipitated the civil war, ante, VIII, 14-25. E. Roberts assesses the value of fifteenth-century Welsh poetry as a guide to the interpretation of popular religion and, in particular, of the church's impact on the 'uchelwyr' who patronised the bards, in Denbigh- shire Hist. Soc. Trans., XXV, 51-91 (in Welsh). Summarising the fruits of recent research on the topic, G. Williams identifies the more interesting problems and the more challenging possibil- ities facing historians of the diocese of St. David's from the end of the middle ages to the Methodist Revival, in Journal of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, XXV, 11-31. From the surviving act books of the consistory court of Hereford diocese, E. J. L. Cole cites a number of cases of uncanonical and clan- destine marriage in late-fifteenth-century Radnorshire, in Trans. Radnor- shire Soc., XLVI, 68-72. Drawing upon a 'cywydd' by Lewis Daron, C. Stevens injects some life into the skeletal facts known about the sixteenth-century Augustinian prior of Beddgelert, Dafydd Conwy, in Caernarvonshire Hist. Soc. Trans., XXXVIII (in Welsh). W. R. B. Robinson continues his analysis of the Welsh estates of Henry Somerset, earl of Worcester (d. 1549), with a detailed investigation of his officials and servants, ante, VIII, 26-41. P. S. Edwards considers the unusual nature of the contest for Cardigan Boroughs in 1547, an event which gave that constituency a unique place in the history of Welsh parliamentary elections, ibid., pp. 172-87. S. L. Adams assesses the significance of a composition drawn up between the earl of Leicester and his tenants of the lordship of Denbigh in 1564 and considers its value for the interpretation of the agrarian history of north-east Wales, in Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XXVI, 479-511. With the texts of five wills, proved at St. Asaph in the years 1567-80, C. Fychan further substantiates the connections between William Salesbury and Llansannan, in Denbighshire Hist. Soc. Trans., XXV, 191-99. The gaol files of the great sessions for the reign of Elizabeth I provide S. L. Adams with a list of office-holders for the borough and lordship of Denbigh and an opportunity to discuss their functions and political significance, ibid., pp. 92-113. G. Williams examines William Morgan's career as bishop of St. Asaph, his vital role in the production of the first Welsh Bible, and the impact of that event upon Welsh religion, language, literature and the survival of 'Welshness', in Journal Merioneth Hist. and Record Soc., VII, 347-70.