Welsh Journals

English Revolution' performs this function admirably. The essays echo or re- capitulate views and arguments expressed in more substantial publications by the contributors and others, so the value of this work does not lie in startling originality. Rather, its strength lies in its comprehensive coverage of the fashionable but complex dimension of popular religious radicalism in the mid-seventeenth century, and in the coherence of that coverage. The editors are to be commended for neither reducing comprehensiveness to facile synthesis, nor confusing coherence with the absence of contrast and tension. This collection of essays does go a long way to meet the need, under one title, for an airing of views by leading historians of sectarianism in the Civil War and Interregnum period. The comprehensiveness of the treatment of radical religion is evident from the titles of contributions-not only is consideration given to such leading groups and individuals as the Baptists, the prominent Levellers, Gerrard Winstanley, the Seekers, Ranters, Quakers and Fifth Monarchymen, but the influence upon them of the currents of popular millenarianism and irreligion is also examined. The coherence of this volume comes from the persistent themes which all of the contributors consider albeit from their own particular perspectives. Of these themes, the most significant involve the relationship between spiritual and secular impulses within religious radicalism, the response to Calvinist predestinarian theology, the conflict between congregational discipline and millenarian enthusiasm, the role of millenarianism itself, and the effect of the contributors' own historical perceptions, even ideologies, in their treatment of these topics. The most commanding theme is the relationship between the spiritual and secular dimensions of sectarianism. All the contributors agree that social and economic experience exerted an important influence. For McGregor the Baptists represented an alternative society freed from the dominant culture, while in his study of the Leveller leaders Manning sees their religious beliefs and programme as having been shaped by their experience of social inequalities. Aylmer also emphasises the extent to which the ideas of Gerrard Winstanley were a moral criticism of the existing social order. The Quakers were from their beginnings, Reay tells us, a movement of political and social as well as religious protest, and in his account of popular millenarianism Bernard Capp stresses the 'gut' desire for a future freed from economic insecurity and poverty. Christopher Hill characteristically focuses on what he sees as dominant materialistic traits in sectarianism. In his introductory essay, Reay provides a very effective consideration of religious radicalism within its wider social context, rightly warning against too narrow a view of religion in a period when it was 'both the legitimizing ideology of the rulers and the revolutionary idiom of the ruled'. Reay is here not only making the obvious point that religious developments should not be considered in isolation from other aspects of society, but he is also, perhaps with one or two of the contributors in mind, cautioning against the inclination of some historians to view the spiritual and secular aspects of radical religion as necessarily competing factors. Aylmer agrees with Reay's point that the religious and secular impulses should be