Welsh Journals

and excessive drinking. Yet, though it often found it useful in some circumstances to proclaim the need for democracy, liberty or capitalism, intrinsically it was not necessarily a design for any of these values. A chapter which this reviewer found especially stimulating was that by Herbert Luthy on Max Weber's ideas. He argues plausibly that there was not necessarily any positive connexion between Calvinist notions and the rise of capitalism at all. On the contrary, he contends that Calvinism's great service was the negative one of keeping out the repressive attitudes of the Counter-Reformation which, wherever it triumphed, succeeded in maintaining and exaggerating all the most reactionary and unprogressive stances of the Middle Ages towards work and productivity. Thus, it succeeded in suppressing development in what had been some of the economically most advanced regions of medieval Europe-Italy and Flanders-which lost out in competition with countries like Holland or England. One final point of special interest to Welsh readers ought, perhaps, to be made. Although the development of Calvinism in Wales is nowhere mentioned in the volume, indirectly it has a great deal of light to throw on the powerful impact of Calvinist values, which could be of much help in interpreting the history of Wales. (It might be added that three of the authors-Menna Prestwich herself, Gillian Lewis and R. J. W. Evans-are Welsh.) Calvinist emphasis on Old Testament teaching and its fondness for Old Testament personal names, its stress on literacy and education, its evolution of a new morality among individuals and families, its criticism of familiar peasant practices, enjoyments and pastimes, its highlighting of the centrality of the work ethic and strict social discipline, its emphasis on the need to use the vernacular in worship, preaching and the printed word, and the appearance of 'body language' such as shaking and jumping among believers in the Camisard resistance movement in the Cévennes-all these have much to contribute indirectly to our understanding of Calvinism in Wales. GLANMOR WILLIAMS Swansea MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF SCOTS. By Patricia Hill Buchanan. Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh and London, 1985. Pp. 287. fl5.00. Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's elder sister, married James IV at the age of thirteen, was widowed at Flodden, and spent the next fifteen years in the hurly-burly of Scottish politics until her son James V took over the reins of power. Initially regent, then ejected in favour of the Duke of Albany, she made various attempts during her son's minority to re-establish her rule, or at least to be granted access to the king and enjoyment of her revenues. She also married Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus (known to the English as the 'Earl of Anguisshe'), was involved in a messy divorce, and then married Harry Stewart, earl of Methven-a marriage she also subsequently