The Church Plate of Radnorshire. By J. T. Evans. (James
H. Alden, Stow-on-the-Wold. 21s.)—Mr. Evans goes carefully through the Radnorshire parishes. All of these, with one unimportant exception, he personally visited, examining the Communion vessels in each. No pre-Reformation plate exists, but there are some interesting examples of Elizabethan and Jacobean manufacture. To state the case in figures, five pieces are Elizabethan and twenty-two of the seventeenth century. The eighteenth century contributed thirteen only ; the nineteenth fifty-four, of which forty-nine belong to the latter half, a significant proof of renewed religions activity. (It should be explained that the number indicates, not separate pieces, but parishes supplied.) We wish that Mr. Evans could have given the name of the " well- known firm of London goldsmiths " who promised a Radnorshire rector to find a purchaser for a valuable chalice-bowl. Various details of historical interest are included. At the Dissolution there was but one Religious House in the county, the Abbey Cwm Hir, which had a revenue of £24 19s. 4d. and three monks. Five chantries had 436 Is. 5d. The lists of Radnorshire families in 1597 and 1905 have scarcely a name in common. " Baskerville," however, appears in " Baskerville-Mynors." Some comparative figures of population in the sixteenth and twentieth centuries are noteworthy :— 1540. 2901.
Old Radnor 1,350 895 New Radnor 1,050 405 Preeteign 750 1,812
Curiously enough, the totals are very similar, 3,150 and 3,112 ; the earlier numbers are calculated on the basis of the enumeration of " houseling people."
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