Welsh Journals

As might be expected, marriage patterns within proto-industrial areas lacked the clearly defined seasonal spread of predominantly agrarian parishes and, as Kussmaul points out, the long-term success of workers in these areas depended to a large extent on the capacity for agglomeration. She proceeds to identify industrial agglomeration in previously arable areas in which industrial work was either pursued together with pastoral husbandry or without dual activity. Dual activity, with men and women working both in cottage industry and livestock farming, involved high establishment costs and a tendency towards later household formation and marriage. Conversely, specialized cottage industrialists, freed from the need to accumulate capital for livestock purchase, would marry earlier, thereby promoting a higher potential growth- rate in the local population, and, given appropriate evolution of specialist skills, the likelihood of more specialization among producers and distributors. Of the two groups, the pastoral-industrialists, often practising their pastoral farming on land far from ideally suited to the purpose, were more likely to become de-industrialized when external pressures were imposed. Thus, old rural industrial areas did not necessarily become fully industrialized in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is an altogether remarkable and original book, offering a view of early modern English economic history from a unique standpoint. In presenting a 'bird's eye view of the past' (Kussmaul's own words), the author reveals a vista which is stimulating, challenging and provocative, and will be the focal point of much discussion in graduate seminars nation-wide. But readers will have to work very hard to master Dr. Kussmaul's methodology and her occasional irritating fondness for tortuous sentences and lengthy parentheses. Unless their memories are more retentive than mine, they will need to spend a good deal of time turning back the pages to establish the identity of acronyms, while the statistically naive among them will require more than a modicum of staying power. Yet their efforts will be amply rewarded and as they read on they will become increasingly impressed by the sheer ingenuity and inventiveness of Kussmaul's approach. As they reach the final stretch they will reflect on the remarkable extra dimension lent to the study of economic history by the computer. But they will also recall that in the final analysis, people, their aspirations, attitudes, and desires, are the ultimate stuff of history, and perhaps in due course local case studies will emerge to fill in the details and amplify the conclusions so compellingly presented by Dr. Kussmaul. R. J. MOORE-COLYER Aberystwyth HIGH CHURCH PROPHET: BISHOP SAMUEL HORSLEY (1733-1806) AND THE CAROLINE TRADITION IN THE LATER GEORGIAN CHURCH. By F. C. Mather. Oxford University Press, 1992, Pp. x, 333. £ 40.00. The career of Samuel Horsley (1733-1806) was diverse by the standards of any age. Bishop in turn of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph, and dean of Westminster, he was also a scientist, editor of the works of Isaac Newton and an important figure behind the Royal Society's planned programme of exploration. As a member of the