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"At a vestry held and assembled in the parish church of Eglwys Fach, the 3rd day of December 1792, it was ordered that a certain seat or sitting place on the north side of the altar in the said Parish Church was to be set up on sale; accordingly the same was sold to John Roberts, representative of John Forbes, Esq., for the sum of £16:7:6; and at the same time No. 41, 42, in the range of the seven guineas seats were sold unto Mr. Hugh Kyffin, representative to Sir W. W. Wynne, for the sum of £14 14s.; and also No. 14 in the range of the £5 5s. seats was sold to David Morris, representative to Mr. Thomas Parry of Ty Gwyn."

From another entry it would seem that certain parties in the erection of seats had exceeded their liberty; but again I will transcribe from the Vestry Book :

"At the vestry held in the Parish Church of Eglwys Fach, on Monday the 11th day of February 1793, by the parishioners then and there assembled, it was ordered that whereas Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, Bart.'s, seats incroached too far into the sitting place of Lewis Lloyd Williams of Hafodwryd, Esq., if the said Lewis Williams will make a decent seat in the Church, he shall be allowed one yard in bredth and length from aisle to aisle to fix the same; and whereas the said Sir Watkin had a greater quantity of ground for sitting places in the old Church than appears he has in the new Church, It was then ordered that he should have the Bench or sitting place on the south side of his old seat, and one of the five guinea seats on the north side of the Church, which together will make up the deficiency."

The following entry implies that certain parishioners would not hesitate, if their rights were invaded, to resort to physical strength, it may be, to prevent the erection of seats on their ground; and apparently seats were sold conditionally, upon the understanding that, should objection be made to the buyer's rights, by purchase, to a certain space in the Church, the money given for the same should be returned to the purchaser. The resolution referring to this matter is as follows:—

May 4th, 1793.

"We, the minister and churchwardens and other parishioners of Eglwys Fach, met at a vestry meeting, do hereby acknowledge to have received of John Forbes, Esq., by the payment of Mr.

Edwards, sixteen pounds, seven shillings, and sixpence, for ground to erect a pew or seat thereon on the north side of the altar in the said Church of Eglwys Fach, and we do engage to hereby repay the said sum to the said John Forbes, Esq., or his heirs, in case any person prevents him from erecting a pew or seat on the said ground."

With this quotation I bring to a close these interesting extracts from the Vestry Book of Eglwys Fach. The extracts show the difficulties connected, in the eighteenth century, with the erection of churches in rural districts in Wales, and they also show that up to the very end of the last century the parishioners were probably, in North Wales parishes, church-going people.

It remains for me to thank cordially the Rev. H. I. Davies, Vicar of Eglwys Fach, for his kindness in allowing me to make extracts from the parish books, and also for the trouble that he took in transcribing for my use several of the extracts above given.

248

Reviews and Notices of Books.

A HISTORY OF LITTLE ENGLAND BEYOND WALES, AND THE NON-KYMRIC COLONY SETTLED IN PEMBROKESHIRE. By EDWARD LAWS. London: George Bell and Sons.

(SECOND NOTICE.)

OUR preceding notice of the work of our able and indefatigable General Secretary for South Wales dealt only with that portion of it devoted to what may be termed primeval Pembrokeshire, and with that period upon which the archeologist is the chief authority. In this branch of inquiry no county history with which we are acquainted can compare with the work at present under review. But when we come to the period for which research of a different order is required, we are forced to the conclusion that Mr. Laws as an historian does not compare advantageously with Mr. Laws as an archæologist. It could hardly be otherwise; for it is given to few men to be eminent in several fields, any one of which calls for undivided attention. Mr. Laws is an experienced and successful digger and delver in barrow and tumulus, and we cannot expect him to attain equal eminence as a plodder through musty deeds and records. The consequence is, that whenever we come across any details connected with or illustrated by pre-historic "finds", they are presented con amore, and leave nothing to be desired; but whenever we might hope for discoveries in parchment or paper, we are disappointed. While, therefore, there is in the first fifty pages much that is fresh and of the greatest value, in the remaining three hundred there is little that has not been gathered from well-known sources. True, the gleaning has been well and carefully done, and it is a decided gain to have a number of scattered facts and notices woven into a clear and continuous narrative. The day has perhaps gone by for such works as Eyton's Shropshire, or Ormerod's Cheshire; but we are conservative enough to regard those monuments of human patience and research with reverence, if not with love. We admit that by many they may be considered heavy, and that they are likely to remain "caviare to the general"; while of Mr. Laws' Pembrokeshire it certainly cannot be said that it is dull, or that it will not be "understanded of the people".

There is plenty in the book to merit the heartiest commendation, and we could easily specify portions, especially those dealing with the fortunes of the county in its later days, to prove our assertion. But as it seems highly probable that it will run into

another, perhaps several editions, we think that we shall be doing better service to the author if we call attention to such points as we consider are open to question and improvement. For instance, Mr. Laws has been especially careful to record the constant squabbles of Briton, Saxon, Norman, and Fleming; but he nowhere gives us a clear and satisfactory conception of the elements which went to make up Pembrokeshire society, the friction between which was the cause of those miserable and ceaseless conflicts. To say that the Welsh were of different temperament to the other nationalities cooped up within the narrow confines of the modern county, and that their love of independence or abhorrence of restraint was so great that they could not brook a master's hand, is to offer only a partial explanation of the chronic turmoil of Pembrokeshire and of every other district of Wales. One of the most striking facts in the history of the Principality is the remarkably quiet manner in which the people of Gwynedd acquiesced in the conquest of Edward I. They had been brought to more desperate straits before A.D. 1282, and had capable leaders after the fall of Llywelyn. But the clue to the change is to be found in the fact that the conquest of Edward meant not only the subjugation of the people, but the inauguration of a new system of internal policy by the introduction of certain reforms into a community established on ideas that had worn themselves out, and that, by respecting some of its most cherished notions, gradually brought into accord the diverse elements in Cymric and Teutonic society. The pacification of Wales by Edward was a much nobler achievement than its conquest. So also the commonly accepted idea that there was something inherent in the Welshman that led him to fight rather than live in peace is founded upon an insufficient knowledge of the lines upon which the nation was developing before those lines were beneficially diverted by the English conquest. The tranquillity that has been the characteristic of Welshmen ever since that period-with the single important exception of Glyndwr's revolt, the exceptional nature of which is seen in the calm that followed his death-proves that the undoubted turbulence of the earlier centuries arose from something outside themselves rather than from inborn tendencies, from environment rather than from character. Therefore, when Mr. Laws says (p. 66) that the Kymro "proved himself incapable of autonomy", because he made no headway against Silurian, Gael, Saxon, and Scandinavian, it only shows that he has not apprehended the nature of the conditions that kept the Cymry from attaining to national unity.

At p. 70 Mr. Laws describes the policy of Rhodri Mawr, who is said to have divided the Principality between his three sons, as "parochial", and considers that the hideous and interminable wars that devastated Wales in the tenth century "were due rather to the senseless law of succession instituted by the founder of the dynasty (ie., Rhodri) than to individual wickedness and folly". This belief Mr. Laws has adopted from the ordinary writers of

Welsh history; but if Rhodri can, by the utmost stretch of probability, be said to have instituted the partition of the Welsh kingdom, it is certain that he only applied to the throne the existing rules of succession to land. Similar phases of national and social life had been passed through by his Teutonic adversaries, until circumstances forced them into new forms of political and economic progress. Sir Henry Maine has observed that the institutions of the Irish (and therefore those of the Welsh) were virtually the same institutions as those out of which the "just and honourable law" of England grew; and he goes on to remark that "why these institutions followed in their development such different paths it is the province of history to decide". Our complaint is that Mr. Laws has not contributed towards that decision, as we might reasonably have expected him to do.

Another branch of the history of Pembrokeshire in which we find Mr. Laws's work at present defective is the condition of the body of the people at an epoch when glimpses of their social existence would be valuable. The early forms of civil life, the tenures under which the general community cultivated their lands or pastured their cattle, and the relations existing between them and their superiors, are in these days subjects of close inquiry; and it is to the county historian that the student of early institutions looks for much of the material necessary for his deductions. He would naturally expect that a history of Pembrokeshire, with its Celtic portion under tribal organisation, its Norman lordships under more or less strict feudalism, its ecclesiastical domain of Dewisland presenting features of both systems, would furnish him with plentiful instances of the action of each upon the other. But Mr. Laws has neglected this field of inquiry. He frequently quotes from the Harleian MS. of George Owen, but has omitted a passage which exhibits the survival of an archaic custom down to the writer's own day. The lord of Kemes notes the existence of a peculiar tenancy called Rudvall, which, by his description of it, seems to have been a relic of the system of communal holding; and as this happens to be the only clear account of such a custom throughout the whole of South Wales beyond what we have in the Laws (though it must have been very common in other districts), it is a pity that our historian should not have turned the benefit of his local knowledge to account, and have given us some particulars of it from ancient title-deeds or surveys. Then there are the "Tudwaldi", tenants of the episcopal manor of St. David's, of whose existence we are made aware by the Valor of Henry VIII, but of whom we hear nothing from Mr. Laws. We have met with the transcript of a charter (now in one of the Irish libraries), we think of the date of Bishop Gower, which has never appeared in the Archeologia Cambrensis, and which is of importance as enumerating the episcopal possessions; but it contains no notice of the peculiar class of tenants above mentioned. Perhaps Mr. Laws was afraid of making his work too dull; but we consider as much popular

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