Faction & Faith: Politics and Religion of the Cornish Gentry before the Civil War. by Anne Duffin. Exeter University Press 1996. XV + 278 pp £27.50

This book is an important contribution to 'gentry studies'. Based on her Ph.D. thesis, Dr Duffin's book is without question well-structured, well-written and well-researched. As the blurb rightly says, she 'draws upon extensive new source documents'. Dr Duffin, however, regrets that 'the absence of local government records has dictated the nature of the work, forcing a reliance on gentry collections and central government records. Consequently, the book focuses upon certain greater gentry families'. The shortage of information on the lesser gentry is perhaps the most disappointing feature of the book.

The author's first chapter - 'Cornwall and the Cornish gentry is, to the present reviewer at least, the most interesting. There is nothing parochial about Dr Duffin. She compares the gentry of Cornwall on the eve of the Civil War with those elsewhere, discussing numbers, status, origins, wealth and marriages. Some interesting conclusions emerge. For example, 'Cornwall had almost as high a proportion of rich and middling gentry as Yorkshire and Warwickshire, and two and a half times as many as Lancashire' . Duffin's next chapter - 'The Religious Landscape' - is very sound and informative. Not surprisingly, Cornish Catholics on the eve of the Civil War numbered only about two hundred. Far more important was the Puritan community, described as 'a thriving and extremely vocal group'. Duffin then discusses the Church of England and the impact of anti-Calvinism in Cornwall. Apparently the impact was 'muted', partly due to the moderate and conciliatory policies of Bishop Hall of Exeter. Moreover, there seems to have been little support for Laudianism among the Cornish gentry. Equally competent is Duffin's fourth chapter on 'Local Government and Defence 1600-1638'. The author shows vividly how much Cornwall suffered from impressment, billeting and martial law. An even greater scourge was piracy. Indeed, piracy and coastal defence were such urgent problems that, as Duffin shows in her chapter on 'Arbitrary Taxation', Cornish people did not object too strongly to paying the forced loan and ship money. Anything to protect the coast and quell pirates. Such resistance as there was to arbitrary taxes, especially the forced loan and knighthood fines, seems to have been Puritan-led.

Duffin has an interesting chapter on factions: the Bagg-Mohun and the Eliot-Coryton factions. Apparently some borough elections were decided on a factional basis in 1628 and the county elections contested in the same year reflected factional divisions among the gentry. But in the 1630's the factions which had dominated Cornish gentry politics disintegrated and political conflict subsided. In her concluding chapter Duffin states that there was no apparent link between divisions of opinion in the 1620's and the sides of 1642. Duffin also says that 'insofar as there was an ideological division between the two Cornish factions, this was rooted in religion' . But if there was a religious division between these two Cornish groups, they are surely better described as 'parties'. 'Factions' are primarily concerned about power and are not ideologically motivated.

In the last two chapters Duffin' s analysis of the Civil War allegiances is a model of caution and sophistication. But perhaps the author is too cautious. After much hesitation she concludes that 91 heads of gentry families showed some 'commitment' to royalism, and 52 to parliamentarianism. This indeed confirms the popular view that Cornwall was a strongly Royalist county. Duffin compares Royalist and Parliamentarian gentry families as regards wealth, education and lineage, but, alas, far too briefly. She also says that 'religion remained the most significant cause of division between members of the Cornish gentry', but does not tell us how many Parliamentarian families were Puritan and how many Royalist families were Anglican. Quantification is essential here, even thouyh it may be difficult to discover religious affiliations.

Despite these shortcomings, Dr Duffin's excellent book deserves to be widely read by academic historians, general readers and Cornish men and women alike.

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