Welsh Journals

rebellion, with its dramatic highlights, its flashbacks, and its intimate knowledge of the terrain, reads as compulsively as a good novel. It is as though Conan Doyle had re-written Micah Clarke after studying the historical sources: 'He [Monmouth] climbed the tower of St. Mary's, Bridgwater, and surveyed the royal camp through a "perspective glass" There on his right was the royal artillery He could even recognize one of the regiments Monmouth was worried. "I know these men will fight", he muttered to his aides. "If I had them I would not doubt of success" Magnificent-but is it History? The main value of the book must rest on that relatively minor portion of it which attempts an analysis of the rebels themselves. According to Dr. Earle, Monmouth's followers were not, as is sometimes believed, young rustics and apprentices. They were mainly solid artisans and shopkeepers from urban areas, drawn overwhelmingly from the middle ranks of society and of a relatively high average age-sober, responsible men like those recruited forty years earlier for the New Model Army and similarly devoted to the Good Old Cause. They were, naturally enough, Dissenters; they came from a very narrow geographical area, comprising east Devon, west Dorset and Somerset; and it seems as though it was deliberate family policy to send only one member to the rebel army as an insurance against disaster. All this is probably true, but the statistical analyses in the Appendix underpinning these conclusions do not inspire confidence, let alone conviction. These analyses are carried out skilfully enough, but this cannot offset the extreme unreliability of the data. The whole operation is based on the so-called Monmouth Roll, a list of known or suspected rebels compiled after Monmouth's defeat by the constables of the parishes in the area of the rebellion. There is admittedly no better source available, but this hardly reconciles one to its alarming deficiencies. As Dr. Earle admits, the scope for error or dishonesty on the part of the constables is enormous and the Roll is also seriously incomplete, including (even if every entry is correct) only about half of Monmouth's 5,000 followers and omitting a considerable part of Somerset, the very centre of the rebellion. Confronted with this unpromising material, Dr. Earle is forced to make so many assumptions, conjectures and approximations that one is left admiring his ingenuity without being more than partially convinced of the validity of his con- clusions. And by his larger contention-that Monmouth, with these more formidable supporters, might well have triumphed at Sedgemoor and that a victory there might have caused a general uprising and the overthrow of the government-one is not convinced at all. C.D.CHANDAMAN Lampeter. Ironbridge: LANDSCAPE OF INDUSTRY. By Neil Cossons and Harry Sowden. Cassel, 1977. Pp. 160, plates, maps. £ 15. Cossons and Sowden have produced, in this breathless historical summary and weighty photographic record, a profile of Ironbridge and