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elsewhere, provides additional evidence for the existence of a church at Margam before the foundation of the Cistercian abbey. It seems inconceiv- able that this "primitive" was meant to adorn the church of an order in which even orthodox Christian statuary was forbidden. Mr. Evans's work would have gained considerably in value had he been aware of the lines along which scholars have been advancing our knowledge of the Cistercian order in England and Wales during the past fifty years. The authoritative and eminently readable surveys of Prof. Knowles do not appear in his bibliography. Nor has the author made use of Dom Canivez's edition of the records of the Cistercian General Chapter, which is by far the most important corpus of material relating to the order in Wales to appear since Birch wrote. The more interesting references to Margam might well have been obtained from O'Sullivan, Cistercian Settlements in Wales and Monmouthshire. A closer reading of Gerald of Wales would have saved the author from the erroneous statement he makes on p. 66 that Gerald "makes no direct reference to abuses either at Neath or Margam abbey". Almost a whole chapter is, in fact, devoted by Gerald to the degeneration of Margam since the golden days of the saintly abbot Conan. The abbot of Margam (almost certainly Gilbert, 1203-1213) is castigated as an aggressive land- grabber who did not hesitate to imprison his own brethren and who was eventually punished by the twofold scourge of epilepsy and deposition from his office. "Under the same abbot or one of similar character," the monks razed to the ground a castle within a knight's fee which they had obtained on lease (this was at Llangewydd), dismantled the local church (at Cae'r hen eglwys) and ejected the parishioners. One of the Margam monks, to Gerald's horror, became a convert to the Jewish faith (Opera, iv, 129-43). Despite missed opportunities, however, Mr. Evans has produced a valuable work which contains much that is new and much, too, that is not easily accessible elsewhere. F. G. Cowley MY GOWER, by H. M. TUCKER. 132 pp. with portrait of author and four maps. Rowlands and Co., Neath. 1957. This valuable book was prepared for publication by Eileen Tucker, widow of the late Horatio Tucker, who wrote it while suffering from an incurable disease from which he died in 1955 at the age of 54. His zest for life and the desire to record what he knew of Gower drove him on in the presence of pain and disability. It is a tragedy that he did not live longer to add to our knowledge, but we must be grateful for what has been given us not only in this volume but also in his previous work, Gower Gleanings, published by the Gower Society in 1951, Born at Overton, Horatio Tucker was a metallurgist by profession, but his primary interest throughout his comparatively short life was Gower, and Gower Anglicana at that. My Gower is confined to the peninsula of