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Andrew J. Brown, Robert Ferrar: Yorkshire Monk Reformation Bishop, and Martyr in Wales (c.1500-1555) [Inscriptor Imprints, London, 1997]. 351 pp. ISBN 0 9528271 1 5. No price. This book seeks to plough more deeply part of a furrow first opened by Sir Glanmor Williams in his pioneering early paper 'The Protestant Experiment in the Diocese of St. David's, 1534-1555', first published in The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XV (1952-4), 212-24 and reprinted in the volume Welsh Reformation Essays (Cardiff, 1967), 111-39: Dr Brown's debt to Sir Glanmor is evident, and acknowledged, throughout. Dr Brown's book is a rigorous chronological account of Robert Ferrar's career, which culminated in agonising martyrdom, most courageously endured, at Carmarthen on 30 March 1555. In the first three chapters, Ferrar's obscure origins in Yorkshire are explored, together with his early formation as an Augustinian canon, and his education in Cambridge and Oxford, which resulted in his conversion to Protestantism; a formative mission to Scotland followed, in the company of his predecessor as Bishop of St. David's, William Barlow, before he returned to St. Oswald's Priory, Nostell, where he became prior for rather less than eighteen months before the Priory was dissolved on 20 November 1539: thereafter Ferrar lived quietly on his generous pension and by farming. In 1547, with the accession of Edward VI and the decisive swing towards Protestantism which followed, he was plucked out of obscurity to become one of the visitors of the Welsh sees, together with those of Worcester and Hereford, and in 1548 he was made Bishop of St. David's, marrying probably early in the following year; Dr Brown devotes eight chapters, together with a concluding 'Epilogue', to his career there. It was altogether an unhappy tenure of the see. In spite of his great desire to spread the teachings of the Reformation, and his evident (and surprising) sympathy with the Welsh people as such, he was hampered by clashes with his cathedral clergy-themselves of the Reformed persuasion, having been brought in by William Barlow-over his claim to head the chapter, and by opposition from powerful laymen when he sought to defend the material interests of the church; he also found great difficulty in managing the precarious finances of the see. This resulted in a welter of lawsuits and a mass of documentation which Dr Brown succeeds in reducing to a semblance of order-no mean feat. He presents evidence to suggest that Ferrar was probably not already in prison at the behest of the Privy Council when Edward's reign ended and Mary's began: that is, he was arrested for heresy, not because of any other misdemeanour. The main body of the book is followed by six appendices dealing with Nostell Priory affairs and with the careers of George Constantine, Hugh Rawlins and William Barlow, and is brought to a conclusion by a list of Abbreviations (which also serves as a Bibliography), full Notes and an Index. Dr Brown's book is much to be welcomed as a solid and illuminating contribution to Welsh church history in the early modem period. When the text is read together with the notes, it will be apparent that his reading has been much wider than is suggested by his rather skeletal bibliography. His researches among the primary sources appear to have been exemplarily thorough, and he has also read widely in the secondary literature, although he does not engage much in current historiographical debate. He does not conceal the fact that he agrees with Ferrar's theological