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seems to have depended partly upon a work, entitled 'Welsh Histories and Poets', by a writer bearing the pseudonym of 'Meiron'. The same 'Meiron' contributed an account of Madoc from Welsh historians and poets to the Monthly Magazine for December 1796. If 'Merion' was responsible for all the additions to Ieuan Brechfa quoted in this book, through J. Morgan Lewis, he cannot have been the least among the forgers and purveyors of forgeries who thrived on Madoc. Deacon's use of Latin sources is as unreliable as his use of Welsh. In his citation of the B.M., Cotton, Vitellius Latin version of the Life of Griffith ap Cynan, he implies that the date 1477 is that of a reference to Madoc as an explorer of unknown lands, whereas in fact it is simply an approximate date of the vivit of Maredudd ap Rhys, whose poem referring to Madoc as a lover of the sea is discussed in succeeding pages. He also implies that Sir John Wynne of Gwydir in the history of his family had named Madoc among the sons of Owain Gwynedd, but this piece of information is taken not from the text of the history but from a pedigree chart in the 1827 edition, for which Sir John Wynne was in no way responsible. In Deacon's version of the genealogical tree of the house of Gwynedd, the first two sons of Owain Gwynedd are named lorwerth and Drwyndwn, making an additional son out of Iorwerth's broken nose. A mass of continental and American material, not otherwise easily accessible to the ordinary reader, has been brought together in the later chapters of the book. Of this material, the only manuscript I would like to see published in full is the French precis of 'Madoc', by Willem the Minstrel. This is an important piece of evidence for the early existence of the legend and calls for a close study. As far as the purely Welsh material is concerned, the book throws no new light on the controversy. E. D. JONES National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth ROYAL AND HISTORICAL LETTERS OF HENRY IV. Volume II, 1405-13. Edited by F. C. Hingeston. H.M.S.O. London, 1965. Pp. lxxix, 403. 140s. The most remarkable fact about this second volume of correspondence of Henry IV's reign is that it appears precisely a century after it was put into proof-which, even by the standards of modern publishers, is rather an inordinate delay. The original proofs were suppressed by the Master of the Rolls in view of the poor standard of editing and the large number of