Welsh Journals

better placed with the other appendices. However, the book contains much of interest and of value, not the least the account of Williams' reaction to the 1904-5 Revival, and his attitude to disestablishment. Dean Renowden is to be thanked for rescuing Watkin Williams from the oblivion that is fast overtaking his library in St Asaph. JRG Roger L Brown, Church and Clergy at Castle Caereinion [Gwasg Eglwys y Trallwng, Welshpool, 1997]. pbk, ii + 91 pp. illus. Price £ 3.50. This is the companion volume to the same author's A History of Castle Caereinion School 1797-1995 [1995]. It is the fruit of the careful and thorough research he has undertaken into the history of the parish where he has been rector since 1993. Roger Brown has published numerous books and articles on the parochial history of the Church in Wales. He is experienced in exploiting to the full not only surviving contents of Parish Chests', but also the records of Queen Anne's Bounty, the Ecclesiastical Commission and the Incorporated Church Building Society, to build up a detailed picture of the workings of the institutional church and the interrelationship between its national and local manifestations. This little book is a fine example of what such records can tell us when interpreted by a discerning scholar. From these pages we learn a great deal about the clergy of Castle, and in some cases their all too human failings. Castle was a wealthy living, for much of its history in the gift of the bishops of St Asaph, and therefore it almost inevitably fell victim to the nepotistic proclivities which several of them found it impossible to resist. Episcopal relations, such as Thomas Clopton (1678-88), Henry Newcome (1761-1804) and Heneage Horsley (1804-47) were all-too-often unworthy recipients of the favour granted them. Newcome quickly tired of Castle, and withdrew to his other parish of Gresford. Horsley, who collected preferment as some collect postage stamps, proved nonetheless a feckless spendthrift, who, when his debts topped L13,000 fled to Scotland. (In this behaviour his career almost uncannily parallels that of his contemporary Richard Watson, the son and namesake of the bishop of Llandaff. Watson was similarly indulged by his father with a copious shower of preferment, but ended his days evading his creditors in Boulogne.) Roger Brown deftly and economically brings such characters as these to life in his pages. All that can be said in defence of such men is that they rarely if ever troubled their parishioners, to whom they would have been little more than names. By contrast, the resident nineteenth century rectors David Davies (1847-72) and David Williams (1872-82) seem to have done more harm than good. Davies'