Welsh Journals

longer 'an inferior category, a cheaper sort of member'. A new, more intelligent attitude had arisen towards the culture and institutions of Wales, with the National Library and the Museum as its representative symbols. All this forms the legacy of the life-work of Tom Ellis and Herbert Lewis, and the measure of their achievements. We must welcome these two biographies for reminding us of them. KENNETH O. MORGAN. Swansea. VALLEY ON THE MARCH: A HISTORY OF A GROUP OF MANORS ON THE HEREFORDSHIRE MARCH OF WALES. By Lord Rennell of Rodd. Oxford University Press, 1958. Pp. 297. 42s. Lord Rennell of Rodd has written the history of a group of manors in the Hindwell valley on the March lands of England and Wales. His sources range in scale from Domesday Book to the activities of two water dowsers who were at work as recently as 1939 and of the Forestry Com- mission with its 'loathsome conifers'. The first impression of his book is of enthusiasm inspired by the land on which he and his forefathers have lived. He knows the valley intimately, and he is concerned to relate his material to arable, flood-land, bog and heath, and sour clay which he and his neighbours still farm. The Hindwell, as he tells us, was not a famous valley; it did not produce famous people. 'It did not provide any more lasting monument than it still displays: the persistence of rural life over a thousand years with the same recognizable structure and foundation which it had before the Norman Conquest'. Unfortunately the book does not live up to the promise of its early chapters. Lord Rennell is happier with topographical evidence than with documents which are often quoted but seldom clarified. Nor can his enthusiasm disguise the fact that, despite long and laborious study, there are still many issues great and small on which he has not formed firm opinions. The result is a book which is repetitive and often indecisive. Some inconsistencies in small things might easily have been removed. Thus, for example, on consecutive pages, Robert de Mortimer is said to have died 'in 1219' and 'in about 1219', while his marriage to Margaret de Say is placed a year before his death and in 1216 (pp. 126-7). Win- chester College is said to have received the manor of Titley in 1395 in the text and in 1391 in the corresponding footnote (p. 131). But lack of precision is also to be found in larger matters. The connection between the manors of Rodd, Nash, and Little Brampton is examined frequently and at length but never resolved. Lord Rennell recognizes that 'the testimony of the land itself in the whole of this area is almost wholly against strip cultivation or open field farming in any form' (p. 160). Yet he attempts in detail to trace in the modern landscape the large open fields once belonging to his group of manors.