This detailed examination of Monmouthshire Quakers over three centuries makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of religious Dissent in Wales. Focusing primarily on the surviving Monmouthshire records (which, Allen admits, may not be entirely typical of Wales), the author charts the emergence of Quakers as a ‘peculiar people’ in areas where Dissent was already flourishing. In so doing, he also demonstrates the failure of the established Church of England to evangelise the more remote corners of England and Wales. He examines the revelations and early witness of those who sought the Inner Light as a real alternative to the prevailing theological orthodoxy, uncovers the mechanisms used in their persecution, and chronicles the movement's consolidation and survival as a distinctive and geographically-diffuse sect. Allen devotes a chapter to the experiences of women in the Monmouthshire Meeting which, far from providing an egalitarian environment, ensured that women Quakers were circumscribed by traditional roles as carers, educators and ‘helpmeets’. His description of the development of Quaker bureaucracy provides a useful introduction to the movement's institutions and practices more generally whilst demonstrating the inflexibility of demands made by the national leadership based in London. Even after the establishment of a Welsh Yearly Meeting, Monmouthshire Quakers were still essentially part of an English religious phenomenon dominated by the unifying ethos and rules of Devonshire House. Having charted the changing mores and fortunes of Quakerism in the region, Allen concludes that Friends may have achieved social acceptability by the end of the nineteenth century but were declining in numbers beyond sustainability: by 1851 Monmouthshire Quakers represented less than 0·01 per cent of the population. This was due to a complex of factors, not merely the end of the ‘heroic age’ of early Quakerism, but emigration to the American colonies and the challenges of survival in the local, social and cultural context. Further, the code of discipline had generated an ‘unhelpful insularity’ that undermined outreach into the wider religious community and even resulted in an internal critique of the Quaker ethos as a vanity in itself. The greatest reason for decline, however, was the Friends' unbending policy of endogamy; between 1692 and 1836 disownments for ‘marrying out’ by far outnumbered disownments for other reasons and there is scant evidence that the Monmouthshire Meeting acted to ameliorate the problem. Further, while the code of discipline undoubtedly contributed to a strong social and religious identity, its rigidity clashed increasingly with local popular culture, creating tensions and dissatisfactions not experienced amongst the highly successful and populist Methodists. Despite a wealth of detail and the occasional collapse of chronology inevitable in a study over a long time scale, Allen successfully places Monmouthshire Friends in their proper context even though the survival of evidence allows him to compare this Meeting more easily with English Quakers than with other Welsh Quaker Meetings. Its scope makes a valuable contribution to the study of provincial Dissent across a period of immense social, political and economic change.