Parson and Parish in Eighteenth-Century Hampshire. Replies to Bishops' Visitations.

One of the most useful activities of local record societies over the last few years has been the editing of visitation returns from a period in which the Church has often had a bad press. Recent historiography, aided by these editions, has begun to reconsider those earlier judgements, and the volumes reviewed here contribute to that tradition. The editors treat their responsibilities in differing ways, with Professor Ward bringing a lifetime of study to the writing of an introduction which is itself an essay on the Georgian Church executed with the verve of the author's customary anti-Establishment standpoint. The Hertfordshire volume, by contrast, is prefaced with an …