Welsh Journals

'In 1677, Charles Edwards suggested that Welshmen were far more skilled in singing wanton poems than praising the Lord in psalms' (p. 148). Dr. Jenkins sometimes appears to assume that suppressing traditional rural sports, piping, fiddling and harping is as simply 'raising moral standards' as is an extension of Puritan values-sabbatarianism, sobriety, Bible- reading (pp. 87-88, 108). By comparison with the age of Morgan Llwyd, Erbery and Vavasor Powell, Dr. Jenkins's period seems very deficient in new ideas: the piety is all very conventional, mostly translated from seventeenth-century English Puritans. It would be nice to know more about the 'growing proportion of the population' who did not come to church (pp. 74, 86). Dr. Jenkins suggests that poverty was the main reason. He quotes Griffith Jones in 1747: 'very few of the Welsh people, even of the farmers, and scarce any at all of the labourers, can at present afford to buy books' (p. 299). Dr. Jenkins has an admirable sympathy for the poor, 'living in cold, dimly-lit and wretched hovels of one room' who 'lacked the material comfort and privacy which were indispensble to regular devotional practice' (p. 122). I should also like to have been told more about the 'impious, profane and irreligious' William Morgan, who thought the Scripture was 'but a fable', Moses 'either a fool or a liar' (p. 99); and about the two teachers (not otherwise discussed) who 'propagated the more passionate and abrasive tenets of Arianism' (p. 283). These are not criticisms. They are an indication that this is one of those excellent books which raise questions, stimulate thought and-it is to be hoped-further research. CHRISTOPHER HILL Balliol College, Oxford STABILITY AND STRIFE: ENGLAND, 1714-1760. By W. A. Speck (The New History of England, 6). Edward Arnold, 1977. Pp. 311. £ 9.95 boards, £ 3.50 paper. This book is described by its author as 'primarily a political history'. But as Dr. Speck explains (p. 1), 'it is concerned with politics in a far wider sphere than the workings of central government'. Thus Part 1, which accounts for well over half of the text, consists of six analytical chapters discussing not only England's constitutional structure under the first two Georges but also its social order, the ways in which its society was changing, its religious life, its economy, and the gradual emergence of a unified 'governing class'. More traditionally, Part 2 concentrates largely on providing a narrative of 'national politics'. And common to both parts is the theme of change in English public affairs from the strife and division at Queen Anne's death to the relative stability of George II's last years. Dr. Speck's book is welcome on a number of counts. Part of its value lies in the informed and balanced synthesis which it provides of the considerable body of secondary literature on Hanoverian England: there