At the National Eisteddfod held in Carnarvon in 1921, through the generosity of the proprietors of the Western Mail, the National Eisteddfod Association was enabled to offer a prize of one hundred guineas for the best work of original research (unpublished) dealing with any period of Welsh History.

Editorial note.

No period in our history is fuller of distracting problems and of dramatic situations than the first decade after the Restoration.

Author's introduction.

Though Vavasor Powell and the chiliastic theorists generally saw in the dissolution of the Saints' Parliament in December 1653 the triumph of materialism and a reversion to arms and men as solvents of the crying problems of the time, it would indeed be difficult at first sight to see during the Protectorate any diminution of genuine Puritan fervour or an abatement of its natural strength.

I. The Commissioners for Approbation.