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A VISITATION OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF CARMARTHEN, 1710. IN 1944 the Representative Body of the Church in Wales, in a decision sub- sequently ratified by the Governing Body, decided to deposit the episcopal, diocesan registry, capitular and other records of the Church in Wales in the National Library of Wales.1 When the records were deposited in the Library a quantity of manuscript and documentary material appertaining to the diocese of St. David's was retained in the episcopal palace at Abergwili, co. Carmarthen. With the kind consent and cooperation of the Right Reverend Eric Matthias Roberts, M.A., bishop of St. David's, this material too was deposited in the National Library in 1972.2 Amongst the items in this second deposit is a small manuscript volume (7' X 5-lff bound in ?calf with gilt and blind tooling on the outer upper and lower covers and ridged spine. Superimposed in the centre of the outer, upper cover is a rectangular red label inscribed in gilt capitals 'Uisitatio Archidiaconatus Maridun- ensis A.D. MDCCX'. The upper half of this cover also bears the inscription 'St. David's Diocesan MSS.' in gilt capitals. The volume contains one hundred and sixteen leaves numbered ff. i-viii (by the present writer), 1-81 (contemporary numbering), and 82-108 (by the present writer). The contents are as follows- ff. i-v (blank); vi, two extracts from an unspecified edition of [William] Lyndwood [:Provinciale seu Constitutiones Angliae]3 and from the English version of Canon LXXXVI of the Anglican canons of 16044 all relating to the duties of an arch- deacon in connection with the visitation of churches; viir, the inscription 'Comperta in visitatione Archidiaconatus de Carmarthen Mensibus Julii et Augusti Anno Domini 1710' (as title-page); viii, a copy of a record of an act of 20 May 1710 whereby John Bettesworth, LL.D., vicar-general and official principal of the archbishop of Canterbury, appointed Edward Tenison, then archdeacon of Carmarthen, as his surrogate and deputy to undertake within the diocese of St. David's during the existing vacancy thereof all those duties which he himself was empowered to undertake in the said diocese by virtue of his patent of appoint- ment; 1-81 (written on recto only), notes on sixty-two parishes within the arch- deaconry of Carmarthen visited by the compiler of the notes; 82r, an alphabetical index to the parishes reported on in ff. 1-81; 82v-83r, a note relating to 'My Lord of Hereford the best Welshman living' [?Humphrey Humphreys, bishop of Hereford, 1701-12], to Welsh sermons by the said bishop, and to the writer's readiness to 'endeavour to get Subscriptions towards publishing of them', and extracts from various sources relating to the provision of bread and wine for communion purposes; and 83v ¾end (blank). From a comparison with the hand in letters written by him preserved amongst the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge it is almost certain that the extracts on f. vi were written by