Welsh Journals

1603 to 1642, Kenyon is little influenced by the most interesting recent explorations. The main theme of these chapters is the struggle at West- minster between the Crown and Parliament. Yet in the last few years several scholars-notably Menna Prestwich, Derek Hirst and Conrad Russell-have shown that the traditional categories of early Stuart history can no longer be used without substantial modification. Some of their work appeared too late for Kenyon to use; but enough was surely available for him to have widened his perspective. Having given an indica- tion of revisionist views in his introduction, he does little to use them in constructing his main narrative. This is very evident in his account of the crisis of 1628-29. He states early on that the first real confrontation between King and Parliament came in those two years. But when his story reaches this point he fails to show how or why affairs had reached this climax. Too little attention is paid either to the struggles between factions at court or to the repercussion of Buckingham's wars on the localities. A similar failure marks Kenyon's analysis of the outbreak of the Civil War. He asserts that Parliament's authority was still blindly accepted at the beginning of 1642. How then did Charles gain a party? How did war come to be fought at all? Kenyon says, rather oddly, that 'war offered a way out', in a time of unemployment and social disorder, and that once it became inevitable men began to rally to the King. All this ignores the widespread reluctance among the gentry to fight at all: the significance of neutralism is hardly noticed. The treatment of religion is thin and uneven. The ideas of Archbishop Laud are fully and adequately discussed. But Kenyon's discussion of the Puritans is meagre, even grudging. He is quite rightly suspicious of the term 'Puritanism'; but the problem cannot be solved by virtually ignoring the vitality of Protestant piety-clerical and lay-in the first half of the century. It is not possible to analyze the politics of 1640-42 without more comprehension of the leadership and energy supplied by the men in London and the counties who believed passionately in furthering the Protestant reformation in England. Kenyon's apparent lack of sympathy with such men-understandable in itself-diminishes the force of his story. These criticisms apply largely to the chapters dealing with the period before 1660. Kenyon's chapters on the later Stuarts show, as one would expect, much deeper understanding and provide an admirable account of the complex politics of those years. It is unfortunate that the conclusion of the book is marred by a brief, superficial chapter on 'Artistic and Literary Trends': this could well have been jettisoned to provide more room for political, economic and ecclesiastical history. PENRY WILLIAMS New College, Oxford A PEDESTRIAN TOUR OF NORTH WALES BY JOSEPH HUCKS, B.A. (1795). Edited by Alun R. Jones and William Tydeman. University of Wales Press, 1979. Pp. lxviii, 114. £ 7.95. Coleridge made a tour of north Wales in the summer of 1794 in the company of Joseph Hucks, who published in the following year an account of the journey. His book, by now virtually unobtainable, is here reprinted