Cylchgronau Cymru

century in the old (and now restored) counties of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, a heartland of Old Dissent in Wales and the nurturing ground of indigenous Methodism. The author attempts to explain how popular value systems emerged around those forms of Protestantism which diverged from the episcopalian religion enforced by law since the mid-sixteenth century. It is an exercise which takes in the histories of individual chapels and meeting-houses, such as the famous ones of Lwynpiod and Rhydwilym, and which discusses the role of prominent pastors such as Philip Pugh and Daniel Davies of Ffynnon Henry, as well as all those notables from the pantheon of Methodism. The author also attempts to evaluate, not wholly successfully, the ebbs and flows of theological discourse, but he does establish how Calvinist theology became the mind-set for most Welsh men and women. Nor are the wider social and political contexts ignored in a discussion which at times tends to be unduly condensed and brief. Even so, a good fist is made of the broader implications for the religious community of these secular changes. Not the least of the author's commendable efforts is to plot the locations of the different denominational congregations so as to produce local distribution patterns, explicable by reference to some of the contextual features. Rather than merely rely on old denominational histories, the author has gleaned evidence from four other sources. He employs the private census of that London Welsh Dissenting leader, Dr John Evans, made in 1715, and the official public religious census of 1851 as the two nodal points. Around these he draws in the details of the licensing of worshipping places made before the diocesan authorities or the quarter sessions. He supplies a useful, if not original, evaluation of these sources that will be helpful to all local historians of religion. He then produces brief details of each chapel in a thorough appendix and sets out in a block graph the chronological pattern of growth for each significant denomination in the area from 1751 to 1851. This, while useful, deserves to be presented more clearly and made more central to the discussion. Nevertheless, one can see how important was the Calvinistic Methodist revival to this area, not only in its own terms but in methodizing the Old Dissenters to make them truly popular by the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The author draws out some interesting quotations to contrast the original differences in proselytizing between rational Old Dissent and experiential Calvinistic Methodism. He reminds the reader of the localized and introverted character of the Society of Friends at Werndriw and is especially useful in attributing the beginnings of Wesleyanism in Cardiganshire to the associations with Cornish mine captains. His greatest