Welsh Journals

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the county seat was won back from the Liberals in 1874. However, Mr. Jones has done far more than merely raise further inquiries. He has ensured that in future the politics of Cardiganshire will be viewed from a totally different historical perspective. Readers will look forward to his techniques being applied to other parts of rural Wales. The other articles in this Ceredigion, while slighter, form an attractive miscellany. Gomer M. Roberts describes the growth of early Methodism in southern Cardigan- shire in the 1740s and 1750s. M. J. Baylis contributes a portrait of Thomas Makeig, a mercer and yeoman of Penlan-Fawr, in the parish of Llandygwydd, in the mid-eighteenth century. B. G. Charles discusses the operation of the Highmead Dairy, near Llanwenog, in the period 1778-97; while David J. V. Jones prints an important document from H.O. 42, which illuminates the episode of 'Rhyfel y Sais bach'. Two volumes have come to hand of the Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society. In volume IV, part iv (1964), the major contribution is a valuable account by Peter R. Roberts of the activities of the landed gentry in eighteenth-century Merioneth. He uses a wealth of diverse material with great skill to illustrate such themes as the growth of road communications, the enclosure of upland wastes, and the reclaiming of marginal lands, the development of new techniques of stock-breeding, and the promotion of local small-scale industry. He also outlines some of the changes in agrarian society during the period, the decline of leasehold tenure, the collapse of the yeoman, and the growth of professionalization in estate management, through agents and lawyers. Already the germ can be traced of those class conflicts that were to disrupt rural society in Merioneth in the later nineteenth century. Among other contributions, those of particular value include an account by A. D. Carr of the Barons of Edeyrnion between 1282 and 1485; a discussion of some of the aspects of the religious history of Llanfachreth parish by Mary Corbett Harris; and a particularly charming reminiscence of a Merioneth boyhood in the 1830s. This volume is embellished by several handsome illustrations. In volume V, part i of the same journal (1965), there is another important article by Peter R. Roberts. This time he outlines the role of the Merioneth gentry in local government, mainly as justices of the peace, from 1650 down to the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. Another notable contribution is an account by Mrs. K. W. Jones-Roberts of the career of D. R. Daniel (1859-1931). The author has much of interest to say of his friendship with Tom Ellis, Lloyd George, and other Welsh Liberal leaders, his work as an official of the North Wales Quarrymen's Union during the dark days of the Penrhyn strike, and his various other literary and cultural interests. Daniel, a self-effacing figure, deserves to be rescued from the shadows. From his early studies under Michael D. Jones at Bala in the 1870s, down to his break with Lloyd George on the outbreak of the First World War, Daniel is a symbol of the awakening and later