Among the topics of Constantine's governmental measures affecting the Church there is one which has received little or no attention in modern scholarship. And yet this topic would seem at least as important as the numerous disquisitions relative to his motivations, sincerity, honesty of purpose and similar questions which have virtually suffocated modern Constantinean research. The problem which would appear to demand an exhaustive analysis, is so much conditioned by the ramifications of antecedent history as well as by the constitutional development that on this occasion I can do no more than tentatively indicate its extent and scope.

The present-day parishioner, constantly urged to take a more positive role in the life of the local church community, might be surprised to reflect that this onus of responsibility is a comparatively recent development, and that throughout most of the Middle Ages, on the rare occasions when parishioners as such were mentioned at all in the ecclesiastical records, it was virtually in the capacity of property, and often troublesome property at that.

Not much is known about Robert Holland, the only Renaissance demonologist to venture into print in the Welsh language. He was born in 1557 at Conway, the third son of a gentleman, and went eventually to Cambridge and into the Church of England. He took his B.A. at Magdalene in 1577–8, was ordained at Ely two years later and spent the 1580s preaching and schoolmastering in East Anglia. In 1591 he became rector of a crown living at Prendergast, near Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, and he was subsequently presented to Walwyn's Castle and Robeston West in the same county. As a result of the patronage of John Philipps of Picton, he was also incumbent of the Carmarthenshire parish of Llanddowror from at least 1594 until 1608. He is presumed to have died before the end of James I's reign, probably in 1622.

Hitherto we have depended on the State, i.e. on the ruling powers in the country—the King and the aristocracy … But these recollec-tions of the past must not engross our minds, or hinder us in looking at things as they are, and as they will be soon, and inquiring what is intended by Providence to take the place of the time-honoured instrument which he has broken (if it is yet to be broken) the regal and aristocratic power, I shall disgust many men when I say, we must look to the people’. (J. H. Newman, British Magazine, 1833).

Late in 1831 a number of Jamaican slaves began a movement of passive resistance in which all work on the island was to be ended on 25 December. By the time that the subsequent chain of events had been played out, perhaps as many as a thousand slaves had died, although the official figures listed 207 killed during the ensuing insurrection and 312 executed in the aftermath. The white colonials immediately turned against the Baptist and Wesleyan missionaries, accusing them of fomenting the rebellion. As a result of this violent and-missionary reaction six Baptist missionaries were jailed, a Wesleyan was tarred, five Wesleyan chapels and ten Baptist chapels were destroyed, while the latter had another four chapels suffering partial destruction.