Welsh Journals

receivers' accounts and a valor of 1447-8. Part III is taken up with a survey of Edward, duke of Buckingham's Welsh Marcher Lordships in 1500, and prints the text of the ducal instructions to his council of that year. In addition there are six appendices, five of which print further texts of variegated interest, and the sixth supplies useful biographical notes of some of the itinerant justices and officials who figure in the documents printed. For good measure we are given in addition a glossary of unusual words in the texts, and two maps, not to mention a substantial index. It would be fair to describe the three parts as relating respectively to the jurisdictional, financial, and administrative aspects of Marcher Lordship history. Each part is preceded by a very thorough and detailed introduction, fuller analysis of which in the Contents would have been desirable. In these introductions the editor minutely examines the information which the documents furnish, and explains its significance with great care. At times, one could wish that he had ventured on slightly more generalized assertions, but his standards are evidently austere and he does not allow himself to depart very far from his texts. Perhaps, indeed, at this stage in Marcher Lordship historiography, it is wiser to stick close to the documents themselves and to avoid generalities that may well be rash. If it is facts about the actual working of Marcher Lordships we want (as indeed we do) then here we are given plenty. Part I throws a clear light on aspects of the jurisdictional rights of Marcher lords. Few Assize Rolls of the sessions in eyre or Great Sessions as they were called, survive from this period, and the specimens here printed are of substantial interest. Mr. Pugh has a good deal to say on the working of the courts and the reasons for their decline. The financial profits from these courts were at one time considerable, but difficult to collect. The practice of 'redeeming' the Great Sessions by the acceptance of a large collective fine, although welcome enough to the Marcher lord, was not exactly popular, and the eventual abolition both of the right of the Marcher lords to appoint justices and to collect fines, consequent upon the Act of Union of 1536, spelt financial calamity to this side of Marcher lordship revenue. Heavy decline in revenues from other sources is the principal revelation of Part II. The detailed analysis of income and expenses in the lordship of Newport provided in this part bring welcome reality into estimates of the real position of a Marcher lord at this period, and is also of value in the wider context of economic history. Consideration of these matters makes understandable the frantic, even though highly unpopular, efforts of Edward, duke of Buckingham, as revealed in Part III, to restore the depleted financial condition of his lordships, especially after the disastrous career of his father Henry. The downfall of the Staffords brought to an end what had once been the greatest of the Marcher Lordships. Cardiff. s. B. CHRIMES.