Welsh Journals

declared that his work was "necessary, masterly, godly, learned, and for which Wales would probably never adequately thank him." The same may well be said of Professor Williams' volume. KJ Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, II, edited by Kenneth Fincham [Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, for the Church of England Record Society, 1998]. xxx + 295 pp. ISBN: 0 851155189 This is the fifth volume in the current series of the Church of England Record Society's publications, and in it Dr Fincham of the University of Kent completes his selection of Articles and Injunctions issued by the bishops and their officials in the period 1603-42. Dr Fincham's earlier volume appeared in 1994 [see the review by Sir Glanmor Williams in volume 3, 1995, of this journal] and in the main was concerned with the years up to 1625. In this volume the selection takes us up to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, though it is best read and used in conjunction with the earlier one. As with volume I, there are several sets of Visitation Articles addressed to churchwardens which are of particular interest to historians of the Church in Wales, especially those of Bishop Edmund Griffiths of Bangor (1634, and collated with those of his successor, William Roberts, for 1640) and those of Bishop John Owen of St Asaph (1637, and collated with those of his subsequent, 1642, visitation). The years covered by this volume included the heyday of the Caroline church, and Archbishop William Laud's attempts at reform. (Laud had himself been a Welsh bishop, at St Davids, from 1621-6). The articles of Griffiths, Roberts and Owen all reveal these bishops to have been at least in sympathy with Lauds' ideals and preoccupations. The churchwardens were asked to report on the frequency of celebrations of the holy communion (monthly seen as the ideal), upon the ornaments of the communion table, on the wearing of the surplice, and adherence to the orders, rites and ceremonies prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. Dr Fincham shows that Bishop Griffiths' Articles of Inquiry are based upon the 1619 "ritualist" set drawn up by Bishop Overall of Norwich, and those of Bishop Owen ultimately on those of the distinguished Welsh-born bishop of London (and once of Bangor) under James I, Richard Vaughan. Clearly Laud had his active sympathisers in north Wales. All three of the bishops also reveal their concern for the Welsh language, Owen enquiring whether there were copies of the Bible, the Prayer Book and the Book of Homilies in every church in both Welsh and English. These articles also reveal Owen's increasing anxiety as the storm-clouds