Nonconformity in Herts. By William Urwick, M.A. (Hazel!, Watson, and
Viney.)—Mr. Urwick ingeniously begins his history of Hertfordshire Nonconformity with St. Alban (not feeling, however, quite certain that there was such a person), whom he regards as having withstood the "Church Establishment" of his day. (It is, by-the way, "amphiboles," not "amphiboles," that is the Greek word for a cloak.) Next comes John Belle; of him we get an interesting account. He is, indeed, a personage about whom it is worth while to know something. But it seems to us that Mr. Urwick declaims a little too much against the dominant party of the time. The milers in Church and State were not worse than their age. They would have been impossibly superior to it if they had come down from their position and accepted Balle's teaching of equality. And after all is said, Belle certainly threw in his lot with the insurgents, and was at least technically guilty of the murders which they committed. Another interesting chapter deals with the life and death of a certain William, a citizen of St. Albans, who, in the four. teenth century, protested against the oppressive practices of the monks of that place. The fourth chapter is given to the history of George Tankerfield, one of the -Marian martyrs, and the fifth to an secount of "Sir Nicholas and the Lady Anne Bacon." "The Puritan Ministers of St. Michael's" are the subject of the next chapter, which thus brings us, it viill be seen, nearer to the subject of Nonconformity proper. This Mr. Urwick follows out at great length, and with much minuteness. He has, indeed, expended a great amount of pains on his subject, and has succeeded in producing what can scarcely fail to be recognised as the standard work. It would have been better if he could have attained to a little more of the true judicial temper. The sermon form, in which, we are told, much
• of the matter was given to the public, is not very favourable to the development of such a temper. But we gladly acknowledge the general merit of the book.
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