Welsh Journals

of local history students of earlier generations. Mr. Williams has already placed us deeply in his debt; may he long continue the series and thereby increase our obligation to him. HUGH THOMAS Barry College of Education MEDIEVAL CATALOGUE: THE LONDON MUSEUM. H.M.S.O., 1954, reprinted 1967. Pp. 319. 63s. The reprinting of this well-known catalogue of the medieval collection in the London Museum (first published in 1940) will be welcomed by the archaeologist in search of a reference book, the social historian seeking to clothe his documentary evidence with objects of daily life, and by the Londoner interested in how his forbears lived. Like most medieval towns in Britain, London illustrates how constant occupation since the middle ages can make it more difficult for the archaeologist and historian to reconstruct urban life in, say, the thirteenth century than in the Roman period. Thus, much of the information available in this catalogue has been gleaned from miscellaneous artifacts fortuitously salvaged from the Town Ditch, the river wharves, beneath the Town Wall and along well-trodden city streets. One fifteenth-century sword was unearthed at the site of Holborn Underground Station! London is not only unrepresentative among British towns in the means available for the discovery of the Museum's objects; even in the middle ages it was unique in the pace and variety of its life. Foreign influences in the style of domestic objects, for example, are plain enough, but their penetration elsewhere in the country needs further examination; London, after all, even in the middle ages was the commercial, social and political capital of England. Again, although the catalogue demonstrates clearly the surprising degree of Viking survival in sword manufacture into the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, the number and variety of sword survivals in London could hardly be paralleled in other towns. The Museum contains something for everybody: a rich variety of swords and daggers, a heraldic disc (from Finsbury) bearing the arms of Richard II and his queen, Anne of Bohemia, spoons galore, combs and inkwells. The visitor from Wales will be fascinated to see the carved wooden cradle from Chepstow castle which is traditionally (but mistakenly) believed to have rocked Henry V to sleep; meanwhile, the fine plate (LXXXVI) will whet the appetite. RALPH A. GRIFFITHS Swansea ROBERT OWEN, 1771-1858. Gan D. Gwyn Jones. Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, Caerdydd, 1968. Tt. 66. 7s. 6d. Ychydig o lyfrau hanes a gyhoeddir yn y Gymraeg ar gyfer plant ysgol. Rhaid croesawu, felly, pob newydd ddyfodiad. Y tro hwn, cawn