Reviews

REVIEWS Canterbury Cathedral and its Romanesque Sculpture. By Deborah Kahn. 28 x 21 cm. Pp. 230, 278 pls. + 10 colour pls. Harvey Miller, London, 1991 (£38, cased). Dr Deborah Kahn discusses one hundred years of Romanesque sculpture at Christ Church Cathedral Priory from 1080 to 1180. Her book is a long-awaited result of her detailed study of the sculpture over several years, a welcome addition to the specialist literature which already covers stained glass and Romanesque manuscript painting. She includes all sculpture within the Priory Precinct, not just the better-known examples of the cathedral itself. The lavish illustrations are clear and on the whole well chosen: the foreign examples are especially helpful. More information as to the sources and dates of the photographs would have been useful. The appearance of a photograph of the choir (Pl. 122) which goes back possibly to the 1920s seems inexplicable. The material is divided into four periods in terms of archbishops - Lanfranc, Anselm, Theobald and 'Sculpture after Becket'. The two middle sections are probably the most valuable. The Anselm chapter includes an exposition of the crypt capitals ( dates c. 1100) and the source of their subject matter in the pattern books of the Priory's scriptorium, and also entirely new material in photographs and a discussion of the later (c. 1120) capitals on the exterior of Anselm's choir. These have recently been studied and conserved. The Theobald chapter is concerned with the work of Prior Wibert - his 'hydraulic system' and the remarkable buildings associated with the so-called 'Waterworks Drawing' of c. 1165. In the sculpture of these buildings Dr Kahn finds the hands of at least two workshops. The style of men from Normandy, associated with the Abbey of La Trinite at Caen, can be seen, for example, in the Water Tower and the Treasury or Vestiarium. The sculpture of the Green Court Gate suggests the presence of another group of sculptors (perhaps local) who continued the style and patterns of the 1120s. In her final section 'after Becket', Dr Kahn stresses this 'stubborn conservative strain' in the design. Even though the work of William 353 REVIEWS of Sens and William the Englishman is usually seen as an invasion of French gothic, some of the motifs, such as polished shafts and dog-tooth moulding, go back to Wibert's time. Regrettably, she takes the now fashionable line that the fire of 1174 was deliberate - a clearing of the ground for a new pilgrimage church - and she suggests earlier that the 1067 fire might have cleared the ground in similar manner. The most curious and perhaps disturbing Romanesque sculpture at Christ Church Priory is that which was mostly found between 1968 and 1972 re-used at the north-west corner of the cloister and is now exhibited in the crypt. Dr Kahn believes that this came from the west face of the choir screen ( or pulpitum), basing her theory on the older dating for the existing pulpitum. If it had been built c. 1400 when the cloister was also reconstructed, stone from it would have been available for re-use there. However, more recent studies have suggested on stylistic and documentary evidence that the pulpitum was the work of Richard Beke, c. 1450. Even so, there is another possible source for the sculpture which is worth consideration. In addition to the pulpitum there was also a rood screen in the western crossing arch, which would have been taken down during the nave rebuilding c. 1400 or earlier. Nothing is recorded about the character of this screen, but it is possible that the roundels and quatrefoils found in the cloister might have been arranged in bands across it and the twisted columns and balusters might have framed the two liturgical doors each side of the central altar of the Holy Cross. This part of Dr Kahn's study requires pondering further. The intricacies of the evidence for the doors and screens required by liturgical usage in a great monastic church need to be more clearly understood. MARGARET SPARKS Archaeologist at Large. By Graham Webster. 23.5 x 15.5 cm. Pp. 220, 29 illustrations. B.T. Batsford Ltd., London, 1991 (£25, cased). The bulk of Archaeologist at Large consists of a selection of papers by Graham Webster published elsewhere over the years (it is of interest that his first three papers, in 1940 and 1942, appeared in this journal), and three contributions either excluded from other volumes (Ch. 15), expanded versions of earlier papers (Ch. 14, 'a development of an earlier one . . .' whose title is at variance with that given on the flap), or lectures given (Ch. 3). Re-publication without revision has, of course, its drawbacks, especially so in the case of the Romano-British settlement at Maidstone (Ch. 7, Fig. 7.8 and p. 52), which cannot be 354 REVIEWS justified on the basis only of one building, the villa at the Mount, three burials and a few scattered finds (cf. my Cantiaci, 78-9). The bibliography of Graham Webster's prolific publications at the end of this volume not only demonstrates the range of his scholarly interests, but also underlines that the 'selection of pieces for this book has not been easy', as he acknowledges in his foreword. Nonetheless, we are here regaled by quite a spread, for all that technical excavation reports have wisely been excluded as the author had in mind 'the general reader'. Yet, there is plenty for all, general and informed readers alike, from the entertaining notes on 'The Cheshire Cat' (Ch. 2) to 'Lady Godiva and a Celtic Festival' (Ch. 13), via contributions of a narrower archaeological compass (Chs. 4-11) and, of course, Romano-British pottery studies (Chs. 8 and 14), a field that Graham Webster has made especially his own, perhaps second to the Roman army. Indeed, much in which the author allows himself scope both for his scholarship and his endearing, matter-of-fact asides (in Ch. 14, the numbering of sherds 42, 46, etc., seven pages ahead or after their numerical sequence is a nice merry-go-round for alert readers!). The whole volume is attractively produced, with a charming pen-portrait by his wife of Graham Webster 'excavating at Wroxeter' on the dust-jacket, in the archaeologist's characteristic squatting, perhaps over a temporary problem, and with the point of his trowel poised in admonition. This book has given me much pleasure, taught me a lot, always the case with Graham, and I am certain that other readers will also derive pleasure and knowledge from these collected essays. I hope the promised autobiography will soon follow. A.P. DETSICAS Mesolithic Britain. By John Wymer. 21 x 15 cm. Pp. 64, 35 illustrations. Shire Archaeology, Princes Risborough, 1991 (£3.95, paperback). Prehistoric Flint Mines. By Aubrey Burl. 21 x 15 cm. Pp. 56, 28 illustrations. Shire Archaeology, Princes Risborough, 1991 (£3.95, paperback). Prehistoric Henges. By Robin Holgate. 21 x 15 cm. Pp. 64, 35 illustrations. Shire Archaeology, Princes Risborough, 1991 (£3.95, paperback). The above volumes are three recent (1991) additions to the series of Shire Archaeology. 355 REVIEWS John Wymer has presented an authoritative description of the evidence of Mesolithic food-gatherers and hunters in Britain from the end of the last glaciation, about 8,000 B.C., to the advent of a farming economy in the Neolithic period, c. 3,000 B.C. The Council for British Archaeology's Gazetteer of Mesolithic Sites, published in 1977, lists a considerable number of places in Kent where characteristic artifacts of the Mesolithic period have been recorded, and Wymer's general information is therefore of value to all prehistorians - amateur and professional - who may wish to research this middlestone- age era in our county. Aubrey Burl (so-named in respect for the famous antiquary, John Aubrey, who laid the foundation of the study of A vebury and Stonehenge), has written about the Neolithic enclosures known as 'henges'. Kent is unfortunately deficient in examples of these ancient earthwork monuments, which occur in western and northern parts of Britain; about thirty are shown on a distribution map on p. 12, but only one certain example lies south-east of a line drawn from the Wash to the Isle of Wight. Henges occur almost exlusively in the British Isles and they vary in size from 150 to 1700 ft. in diameter, being defined by banks and ditches. It is concluded that they were mainly ritual enclosures, obviously of great importance to their builders who expended much effort in their construction. Excavation of their interiors has revealed enigmatic traces of rites and ceremonies the nature of which can only be surmised. Robin Holgate brings us up to date with information about Neolithic flint mines of which Grimes Graves and Cissbury are the best known examples. Fifteen are shown on a distribution map on p. 8, but not one in Kent. A survey is made of all the excavations on flint-mine sites from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, including the work of such notable pioneers as General Pitt-Rivers and Canon Greenwell. The social and economic significance of the mines is important, as they imply division of labour at that remote period and the distribution of the flint by trade, often over long distances. There is a concentration of mines on the chalk uplands of Sussex, where a local postman, John Pull, carried out excavations and wrote about his discoveries in a book entitled The Flint Miners of Blackpatch (1932). Sadly, his life ended at the age of sixty-one in tragedy, not by accident in the risky business of opening up the old mines, but by being shot in the head by a raider engaged in robbing the Durrington branch of Lloyd's Bank, where Pull was at that time employed as a security guard. P.J. TESTER 356 REVIEWS A Kentish Parson Selections from the Private Papers of the Revd. Joseph Price Vicar of Brabourne, 1767-1786. Edited by G.M. Ditchfield and Bryan Keith-Lucas, 21 x 15 cm. Pp. x + 203, 7 illustrations. Kent Arts and Libraries, 1991 (£9.75 paperback and £12 hardback). But for the chance survival and deciphering of one small shorthand volume of what was originally at least a twelve volume diary much less would be known of the Revd. Joseph Price (c. 1736-1807), let alone 'a vivid picture of the life of a country parson in the later eighteenth century, and of his relations with the neighbouring squires and clergymen' (p. 14). This study draws upon some two-thirds of what survives of the original text of 'Diary VI., 6 October 1769- 1 May 1773', plus other extant Price papers and correspondence. The editors generously acknowledge their access to the notes of the Revd. L. Whatmore, who formerly owned the diary, and a huge debt to the late City Librarian of Canterbury, Mr F. Higenbottam, for having deciphered Price's shorthand and transcribed the entire text. But for his labours 'the original manuscript would have remained inaccessible to modern readers' (p. vii). It is not known where Joseph Price was born, surfacing first as a young man in East Anglia in the late 1750s. He was vicar of Brabourne between 1767 and 1786, having previously been a Dissenting minister. His diary hints at Dissenting contacts. For nineteen years he ministered to a village of some sixty houses and 300 inhabitants, containing a small workhouse or 'poor-house' for about thirty paupers. He was also curate and from 1776 rector of the neighbouring parish of Monks' Horton. Two major themes in his diary centre around two principal obsessions in life: ecclesiastical preferment and a favourable marriage. He died, however, in 1807 'a bachelor, without achieving the advantageous marriage or the major preferment in the Church for which he had yearned' (p. 30). Nevertheless, there was one 'very considerable consolation' at the age of 46 when, in 1782, he inherited a substantial property and its income from Mrs. Mary Lane, the widow of Joseph Lane, a wealthy London sugar merchant and a cousin of Price's father. His friendship with her is described in Chapter 2. Resulting from this bequest both his style of living and his social status were improved. Three years later from 1785 he leased a house at £30 5s. per annum, with a stable for his horse, within the Precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, where he lived for the rest of his life. The following year he resigned the livings of Brabourne and Monks' Horton to become vicar of Herne, which living he exchanged for that of Littlebourne in 1794, relying thereafter on a curate to perform his duties. In pursuit of ecclesiastical 357 REVIEWS preferment he desired to become one of Canterbury's Six Preachers, admitting as early as 1770 'I have a liking for a Six Preacher, but never could obtain anything' (p. 39). Pessimistically, he recorded elsewhere in his diary 'I scarce know one person in Kent that can be serviceable to me in the church or in life' (p. 41). With an intensely calculating mind Price assessed the wealth and social standing of his peers, whether clerical, landowning or widowed. With preferment in the church in mind he persistently pursued the powerful and influential, his calculating eye focussing on any vacant Kentish benefice, where 'he would assess carefully its income from tithes, from the glebe, and from "surplice fees" - the fees for baptisms, burials and weddings' (p. 32). What is presented in this volume is 'essentially a record of the careerist, the financial and the social concerns of a parish clergyman in East Kent during the early 1770s' (p. ix). Although Price appears to have written his diary chronologically, 'it is not really a diary in the usually accepted sense of a daily record of events and thoughts.' It does not offer 'a coherent day by day narrative'. Indeed, because he 'only rarely recorded the dates of his remarks and frequently added further material in subsequent years without explicit indication that he had done so' (p. ix), a thematic approach has been sensibly adopted for this volume, with each chapter concentrating on a specific theme, hence 'Introducing Joseph Price' (pp. 1-14), 'Joseph Price in Search of a Wife' (pp. 15-31), 'Joseph Price in Search of Preferment' (pp. 32-57), 'Joseph Price at Cambridge' (pp. 58-75), 'The Cathedral Precincts' (pp. 76-99), 'Joseph Price and his Neighbours' (pp. 100-48), 'Manners and Fashions' (pp. 149-66) and 'Annual Stocktaking' (pp. 167-70). A diary can prove to be very revealing about its author as well as throwing light on other people and this is certainly the case here. From Price's 'considerable interest in eligible ladies' emerges the diary's 'greatest value, namely its essentially private nature: it was written for his eyes only' (p. 10). He did not seek to hide his ambition or avarice and on occasions he was snobbish in his thinking and behaviour, believing that 'people in trade do not make gentry till the fourth generation' (p. 154). References to how conscientiously he performed his ecclesiastical duties are few compared to his associations with the clergy and gentry of east Kent. He 'enjoyed the company of lively and intelligent people and recorded many of their remarks' (p. 14). He was well informed about public affairs. He was also 'an acute observer of the conventions, manners, and tastes of polite society', striving for 'a mastery of what was regarded as etiquette', attaching 'much importance to the best forms of behaviour' and criticizing 'those people who fall short of the highest 358 REVIEWS standards' (p. 149). He read widely and his diary provides scattered indications of what he read. The Bibliography for this book (pp. 186--90) reveals an amazing depth and breadth of research among a wide range of manuscript and printed sources. The editors are to be congratulated on their detective work. In this scholarly book the reader is more than introduced to some of the notable ecclesiastical and landowning worthies of later eighteenth-century Kent in terms of their wealth, residences, life-styles and ways of thinking, supported by a fifteenpage 'Biographical Register' (pp. 171-85), which is wider ranging both geographically and historically, containing 272 entries. Chapter 6 (pp. 100-48) is devoted to 'Joseph Price and his Neighbours', the names being presented in alphabetical order: Barrett, Breton, Brett, Bridges, Brockman, etc. Lord Romney is noted for drinking 'tea with everybody' but 'dines with no one' (p. 104), while 'Deedes visits every farm he has once a year and writes down what every field is sown with' (p. 122). Price succeeded the eminent archaeologist, the Revd. Bryan Faussett (1720-76), as rector of Monks' Horton, describing him as a 'most unhappy man' (p. 126), who 'does not agree long with anybody' (p. 128). 'The lavish scale of culinary indulgence at Sir Edward Dering's house at Surrenden, near Ashford' is commented upon (p. 152), while 'Lord Guilford has prayers read every morning at Waldershare by a clergyman' (p. 153). Professor Keith-Lucas and Dr Ditchfield are to be congratulated on their editing, supported by seven illustrations and an excellent Index (pp. 191-203), subdivided into People, Places and Subjects. This book deserves. to be widely read and will long remain an important source of reference. Among the more miscellaneous references to Kentish economic and social history are details of expenses incurred by Mrs. Lane on a visit to Margate (p. 160), while for nearby Ramsgate Price offers a rare indulgence into a detailed topographical description of the new harbour, as 'one of the last suriving entries to his diary' (p. 164). Finally, the chapels in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral being set aside for storing the prebendaries' coal (p. 77) can be confirmed two years after Price's death in the observation of an anonymous 1809 traveller, assessed by this reviewer in (Eds.) Alec Detsicas and Nigel Yates, Studies in Modern Kentish History (Maidstone, 1983), on how 'at this time One of the Prebends has applied it to the noble purpose of being a Depositry for his Faggots'. J. WHYMAN 359 REVIEWS The Buildings of Roman Britain. By G. de la Bedoyere. 24.5 x 18 cm. Pp. 256. 1 map and 185 illustrations (figs. and pls.) + 16 colour plates. B.T. Batsford Ltd., London, 1991 (£25, cased). This is a book to enthuse over! A volume in the publishers' enlightened series of archaeological publications, it is written by an author who can both enjoy his subject matter and illustrate it, perhaps, even better. The Buildings of Roman Britain is a comprehensive survey of military and public buildings, houses, sacred sites and other buildings, after an introductory chapter on construction techniques and materials. It also contains three appendices on drawing projections, inscriptions and recommended sites as well as a full bibliography, references and an index. Yet, this is not merely a coffee-table book containing excellent drawings and photographs (pity the transposition of colour plates 6 and 9!); the author also discusses what he portrays so well. No doubt there are matters of detail that specialists and excavators may criticise, constructively, I hope, but I remain in de la Bedoyere's debt for such an obvious labour of love. For this is a reference book that certainly fills a huge gap in the literature of Roman Britain and provides, as it beautifully does with its reconstructions, the missing dimension of height. No longer do we need to call on our imagination and visualise a structure at our feet only in terms of so many feet long by so many feet wide: we can now see it three-dimensionally. Both author and publishers are to be warmly thanked; he for the labour of compiling and they for the inspiration of publishing such a volume. I thoroughly recommend this book as a 'must' for anyone concerned with Romano-British studies, to librarians and individuals alike. A.P. DETSICAS The Last Rising of the Agricultural Labourers: Rural Life in Nineteenth Century England. By Barry Reay. 22 x 14.5 cm. Pp. xvii + 226, 43 plates, 4 maps, 2 graphs and 14 tables. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990 (£40, cased). Many in Kent are aware of the Battle of Bossenden Wood, in which agricultural labourers, led by 'Mad Tom' or 'Sir William Courtenay', were shot by soldiers in the last engagement of its kind in England. But nationally, the incident has been largely ignored. In this book Barry Reay raises the event from obscurity and places it alongside the 360 REVIEWS Peterloo Massacre and the Newport Rising as a significant episode in nineteenth-century protest. It was, he contends, far more than 'the last battle fought on English soil: it was the last revolt against the New Poor Law; England's last millenarian rising, and the last rising of the agricultural labourers' (p. 175). Here we have far more than a book about a battle. Reay starts with a detailed investigation of the protesters' communities, Dunkirk and Hernhill. Every conceivable source is used to build up as complete a picture as can ever be achieved of rural life in the early nineteenth century. We are taken into the homes of the labourers. We see their dwellings and their furnishings. We learn of the size of their families - not through the single snap-shot provided by one census, but the complete picture, built up through a study spanning several decades. We discover their jobs, their income and expenditure. Reay brings home vividly the precarious nature of the existence endured by the majority of working people in this part of England at this point in history. The rising itself is dealt with relatively briefly. Here is the work of a professional historian. The context receives far greater attention; for example the timing of the uprising - in May, a traditional festive season when 'recreation could be given a nudge in the direction of riot' (p. 103), and the religious excitement of the 1830s, when belief in the Second Coming reached a peak. Indeed, the religious element of the uprising is a major theme of the book. Reay stresses Courtenay's charismatic, messianic appeal. 'He was said to have shown people the nail marks on his hands as proof that he had been nailed to the cross' (p. 106). 'He convinced some of his followers that they were invincible to bullets' and 'Courtenay was almost a combination of white witch and messiah' (p. 107). The authorities took the messianic nature of Courtenay's appeal seriously 'There was debate about the best way of disposing of (the) body' (p. 105). It was decided to hold a public burial to scotch the idea that he '"might be expected again from heaven to revisit earth"' (p. 155). Following chapters examine the background of the rioters (typical of the area), the trial, the passing national interest and the subsequent fate of the families of those involved. It is generally accepted that agricultural labourers had a miserable existence in the nineteenth century and the question has been raised before as to why there were so few disturbances. The author's final chapter is largely concerned with this problem. He reminds us that, while Dunkirk was an unusual settlement, most of the protesters came from Hernhill, a community typical of many. He goes on to deny that Courtenay provided a unique element. He suggests that, notwithstanding the difficulties of rural protest, there was a 'hidden 361 REVIEWS potential at the popular level ... which could have been tapped by radical activists' (p. 178). Perhaps. By way of extending the debate it could he noted that north Kent was the most volatile part of rural England in the 1830s. The Swing Riots started at Lower Hardres, near Canterbury, in 1830. Bapchild, near Sittingbourne, saw the start of the demonstrations against the New Poor Law in 183 5. Finally, we have the Hernhill Rising of 1838. Did north Kent's agricultural labourers undergo some kind of subliminal radicalisation from the news they received from travellers on Watling Street - the highway between London and the Continent? Could this explain their willingness to riot, so lacking by their equally depressed and repressed brethren elsewhere? And were Hernhill and Dunkirk, both in the Blean Forest, possibly imbued with a stronger sense of folk-lore (Green Men, etc.,) than others and so more susceptible to the messianic Courtenay? Barry Reay provides the amateur researcher with ideas for new lines of enquiry. His methodical investigation of the communities of Hernhill and Dunkirk and the contribution on millenarianism give the book a national relevance. It is scholarly and detailed, yet the style is not academic and the reader is carried easily along. This is a book which the local historian of the nineteenth century needs and which the general reader will enjoy. DA YID HOPKER Archaeological Investigations on the site of Chertsey Abbey. By Rob Poulton (with a major contribution by the late Group Captain G. Knocker). 29.5 x 21 cm. Pp. 86. Research Volume of the Surrey Archaeological Society no. 11, 1988 (Price: not stated). It is a sad fact that many of the greatest abbey ruins in Britain have been dug into by antiquaries in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries with only poor published accounts to tell us of their work. St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury is a good example of this.1 The great north-west Surrey Benedictine abbey at Chertsey (founded in c. A.D. 666 by Bishop Eorcenwold and briefly the burial place of King Henry VI (1471-84)) has suffered the same fate. Early diggings were carried out in 18 5 5 and 1861 (with prompt, but inadequate publication), and then there was a long pause until 19 54 when rescue excavations (a series of 63 small trenches) were hur- 1 See M. Sparks, 'The recovery of the St. Augustine's site, 1844-1947,' Arch. Cant. C (1984), 325-44. 362 REVIEWS riedly carried out. These excavations, undertaken before a new housing development, remained unpublished until Rob Poulton gathered all the material together over thirty years later. The site of the great abbey is today a sad sight, with some of the unbackfilled excavations still visible in a 'sunken garden' (to anyone looking surreptitiously through a hedge!). A public open space to the west has, however, recently acquired a notice, which does at least commemorate the nearby abbey site. The village of Chertsey, once an island in the Thames, is now nearly an island between the M3 and M25! Let me say straightaway that Rob Poulton's research report for the Surrey Archaeological Society is an excellent and invaluable piece of work. He not only publishes Group-Captain Knocker's 1954 excavations in summary form (the full text is in a microfiche at the end of the volume), but also brings together other material from the nineteenth-century excavations, and reports on his own very small 1984-85 excavations and 1983 geophysical survey. Of particular interest are the fine series of 1855 and 1861 photographs (published here for the first time), showing the earlier diggings and some of the people involved in them. Chertsey Abbey was also famous because in the thirteenth century it made and used some of the finest glazed floor-tiles ever produced. There are, for example, magnificent Chertsey tiles of Richard I and Saladin on display in the British Museum. About 200 of these tiles were found during the 1954 excavations, and they are published in this volume in a useful report by Mrs. Elizabeth Eames, although unfortunately the site of one of the tile kilns (found in 1922) appears now to be covered by the 1950s road and houses. Group-Captain Knocker's 1954 excavations and report are, sadly, not very informative, and there is little that can be generally concluded. Nothing has been found of the Anglo-Saxon abbey, and the overall plan of the later Romanesque church (first drawn in 1861) is still known only in outline (for example, no details of the nave and presbytery arcades are known). In the later Middle Ages the three early twelfth-century eastern apses were replaced by square terminations, and a new Lady Chapel was added to the south-east side. Apart from the Chapter House burials, the form of the claustral buildings is barely known, though Rob Poulton has produced (in the front pocket) a useful new 1:200 overall plan of all known walls, burials, etc. Also, using post-medieval maps and documents, an overall plan of the whole abbey precinct (with outer court, fishponds, etc. located) has been reconstructed. This is, therefore, a useful bringing together of all available material on the physical remains of the abbey (the documentary 363 REVIEWS history has not yet been re-assessed) and it makes the present writer long to see a new research excavation carried out on this site. Alas, the same could be said about many other of the great abbey sites in Britain! TIM TATTON-BROWN Jack Cade's Rebellion of 1450. By I.M.W. Harvey. 22 x 14.7 ems. Pp. xiv + 220. 7 maps and 2 appendices. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991 (No price, cased). For too long Cade's Rebellion of 1450 has been bracketed subordinately with the better-known Rising of 1381. To outsiders, our inflammable nature has been explanation enough; to students of Kentish history our proximity to London, sensitivity to the French wars, good communications and rising yeoman and artisan classes have made our public-spirited rebels, in both periods, intelligible forerunners of the politically intelligent Kentish community of the seventeenth century. I.M.W. Harvey has rendered Kentish historians two services. Her full-length work, based four-square on recent research, as her excellent bibliography shows, finally supersedes my 1950 pamphlet and deals fully with events at court, in London and throughout the south-east. As importantly, she sharply differentiates the 1450 rebels from the peasants of 1381, revealing rapid changes over seventy years in the county's economy and society. Dr Harvey's text, illuminated by succinct footnotes, describes an ineffective, bankrupt king, corrupt courtiers like Lord Saye and Sele and their local hangers-on perverting justice with partiality, peculation and force to the outrage of the law-resorting yeoman, alarmed for Kent's defences by defeats in France. Questions remain, in treating the Rising, about who Cade and his backers really were; how he held, then lost, his hold on his followers and why he left London with an inadequately worded pardon, to bolt for Sussex, via Rochester, leaving many supporters still in arms. The Revolt in other counties and continuing Kentish insurrections are particularly interesting. The Medway valley and the Weald remained their heartland while east and north Kent settled sooner as some well-plotted maps reveal. A new analysis of the pardon lists and the Kentish Petitions (fully discussed in appendices) shows Canterbury's councillors ensuring inclusion in pardon lists, despite foiling a March rising and barring their gates to Cade. The rebel host had some gentry leaders and some 364 REVIEWS riff-raff but the bulk are from the solid lower-middle ranks of village and small town, jurors, hundred bailiffs, constables, 40s. freeholders, litigious, literate and frustrated at the breakdown of competent, solvent government and minimal standards of impartial local justice. No wonder Kent and its archbishop greeted the Yorkists in 1460 with joy. H.M. LYLE East Wickham and Welling. By P.J. Tester. 21 x 14.5 cm. Pp. 51, 18 illustrations. Bexley Libraries and Museums, Bexley, 1991 (Obtainable from: Bexley Local Studies Centre, Hall Place, Bourne Road, Bexley, £2.10 incl. p + p). Kent and East Sussex Underground. By members of the Kent Underground Research Group. 21 X 14.5 cm. Pp. 128, 36 figs. and 1 map. Meresborough Books, Rainham, 1991 (£5.95, limp). Ashford: A Pictorial History. By A. Ruderman and R. Filmer. 24.5 x 18.5 cm. 1 map and frontispiece, 175 illustrations. Phillimore and Co. Ltd., Chichester, 1991 (£10.95, cased). These books are three useful publications intended for local historians and general readers alike. East Wickham and Welling is a second edition of Peter Tester's short history and guide of his own locality, ranging through the ages from Roman times to the nineteenth century and suburbanisation, with information on local leading families and buildings. It is very attractively produced and interesting within its limited canvas. Kent and East Sussex Underground deals with a host of topics connected with mining, debeholes, tunnels and secret passages, wells and natural caves, and describes the methods used in the exploration and recording of such features as well as warning, very wisely, of its dangers and pitfalls. It is very well illustrated and a mine of information for readers interested in such underground pursuits. Ashford: A Pictorial History is in the rich vein of such photographic publications explored by some publishers in recent years, with an eye to the nostaligia of 'the good old times'. A first cousin of Filmer's Ashford in Old Photographs (Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., Gloucester, 1988), this book is organised in sections dealing with roads, the market, shops and shopkeepers, inns and innkeepers, public 365 REVIEWS services, transport, churches and chapels, schools and charities. It is very well illustrated with old photograhs, prints and maps accompanied by full and informative captions. A.P. DETSICAS Freewill or Predestination: The Battle over Saving Grace in mid-Tudor England. By D. Andrew Penny. Pp. xi + 249. Studies in History, 61 (1990), Royal Historical Society, London, 1991 (£35, cased). For the past thirty years all study of the Reformation of England has been dominated by the views of Professor A.G. Dickens, who sought to establish a religious consensus in which there was a natural progression from fifteenth-century Lollardy to seventeenth-century Puritanism, and for whom any deviation from the overall consensus represented little more than the opinions of an unrepresentative and uninfluential minority. More recently there has been an attempt to challenge this view of the English Reformation, mostly by those who are anxious to detect less enthusiasm for reformed doctrines and greater attachment to traditional Catholicism. But there were also in England, as elsewhere in Europe, those who were far more radical in their outlook than the strict Calvinists who formed the leadership of the reformers in Britain. It is these people, who were of particular importance in the south-eastern corner of England, always a bastion of radical opinions, who form the subject of Dr Penny's book. Building on the previous publication of J.F. Davis in this same series (Studies in History, 32) Dr Penny establishes some interesting links between Lollardy Anabaptism and the emergence of a group of believers in free-will that were to challenge the orthodox Calvinists of the Edwardian and Elizabethan religious establishments. They included a number of Kentish heretics such as Henry Harte of Pluckley, Thomas Cole of Maidstone and Robert Cole ofFaversham. It is notable that these were all parts of the County in which extreme Puritanism and Protestant dissent flourished in the seventeenth century, and Dr Penny shows that they were centres of religious radicalism a century earlier, if not before. What emerges from Dr Penny's book is a picture of a small group of religious radicals scattered throughout the south-east of England who were to some extent the forerunners of the later Baptists and Independents, who wanted freedom to interpret the scriptures as they thought fit, and who in particular could not accept the Calvinist doctrines of election and predestination that were officially adopted by the reformed Church of England in the articles of 1563. Though the detail is 366 REVIEWS interesting and well analysed, Dr Penny does not really succeed in bringing the strands together, and his claim (pp. 215-6) that these radicals ought to be seen 'as a genuine part of the tradition of moderation and compromise which came to characterise both the Elizabethan Settlement ... and the Restoration Church' seems both a little far-fetched, and indeed to attribute to both a 'moderation and compromise' that was neither intended nor accepted at the time. Nevertheless, despite these reservations, there is no doubt that Dr Penny has made a scholarly and useful contribution to the current debate on the nature and development of the English Reformation, and religious opinions in England between the late fifteenth and the early seventeenth centuries. NIGEL YATES Also received: The Goddess of the Stones: The Language of the Megaliths. By G.T. Meaden. Souvenir Press, London, 1991 (£18.99, cased). Circles from the Sky. (Ed.) G.T. Meaden, Souvenir Press, London, 1991 (£14.94, cased). 367