Royalism, Religion and Revolution: Wales, 1640–1688, by Sarah Ward Clavier

Good history books can usually be divided into those which overturn an accepted scholarly consensus and those which reinforce one: this volume fits into the latter category. It has always been recognised that seventeenth-century Wales was unusually conservative in its political and religious culture, and that this resulted in its powerful allegiance to royalism, especially in the Civil War, and its corresponding support for the established Church, with episcopacy and the traditional liturgy. What Sarah Ward Clavier does is to explain both better than before. Her study is a regional one, of the north-eastern Welsh counties of Denbighshire and Flintshire, which seem reasonably typical of most. It is of necessity mainly confined to the gentry, who have left the overwhelming majority of the surviving records, but they clearly enjoyed the sustained loyalty of most commoners, who shared their attitudes. The body of sources employed for the study may well be exhaustive, comprising as it does both national and local collections, in manuscript and print, and also much material evidence, of buildings, paintings, furnishings and ceramics.