Welsh Journals

authors. Throughout, Mrs. Chadwick presents her arguments pains- takingly, and if at times one loses sight of the druids themselves behind the complex of source material, one cannot but appreciate the fact that the author has given us yet another interesting study in the growth of written tradition and in the methods of composition of the authors of a much earlier age. MORFYDD OWEN Cardiff GILBERT FOLIOT AND His LETTERS. By Dom Adrian Morey and C. N. L. Brooke (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, New Series, vol. XI) Cambridge University Press, 1965. Pp. xv + 312. 60s. Gilbert Foliot was a vigorous and bitter opponent of Thomas Becket, and over the centuries his share in that great controversy has clouded his reputation. To readers of the WELSH HISTORY REVIEW he is, perhaps, best known as abbot of St. Peter's, Gloucester (1139-48) and bishop of Hereford (1148-63). He owed both appointments, in part at least, to the influence of his aristocratic relatives, Miles and Roger, successive earls of Hereford. After training in the schools he took vows as a religious at Cluny and was soon entrusted with responsibilities, first as a prior at Cluny, then as prior of Abbeville. Finally, in 1139, he moved outside the Cluniac connection to become abbot of Gloucester, whose interests included the abbey's possessions in south Wales. (The priory at Ewenny (Glam.) was founded while he was abbot). At Gloucester his flair for administration was put to good use, while his Welsh possessions involved his community in prolonged negotiations with rival claimants. That story has been told, in an earlier essay, by Professor Brooke. Foliot's tenure of the abbacy of Gloucester plays a comparatively minor part in the authors' interpretation of his life. Here, they are chiefly concerned to repeat the argument that, as abbot, he connived at forgery in the interest of his house; his being unscrupulous in this respect is linked with a similar lack of scruple which they find in his relations with Becket. Dom Adrian Morey and Professor Brooke have been working for many years on a new, and much-needed, edition of Foliot's letters, which is soon to appear. Meanwhile they have published this volume of studies which, as they say, 'outgrew the frame of an introduction, and came to have a life and being of its own'. A biography is not possible: the material is too patchy, and the personality of Gilbert Foliot remains elusive to the last. Instead, the authors have produced 'a study in interpretation'. And what an intriguing problem Foliot presents. Few twelfth-century bishops earned more general or more effusive plaudits, until as bishop of London-he held the see from 1163 until 1187-he became deeply and irrevocably involved in the struggle between Henry II and Becket. It is, of course, this great episode which dominates his life. He was probably over eighty when he died, and for many years he had been a