Welsh Journals

Wales, and Gascony claim to have power to establish collective settle- ments? Such questions are barely touched upon by Professor Beresford, and it is to be hoped that his book will stimulate others to examine these important problems about the nature of royal, delegated and seigneurial authority. Further parallels between the three chosen areas can be drawn. Many new towns founded on virgin soil were planned on a grid system of 'chequers', which Professor Beresford's excellent drawings illustrate admirably. Others were planned according to the contours of the land on which they stood. Thus Conway, Penryn (Cornwall), Kingsbridge (Devon) and Monsegur (dep. Gironde) hugged steeply sloping sites. A perfect grid system was obviously impossible, and a bastide such as Monsegur still presents a similar appearance to older settlements such as Najac (dep. Tarn-et-Garonne), which cling to the spine of their hill-top site. In sum, this book will serve as an invaluable source of information for scholars and for all those interested in local history and topography. Despite the reservations which must be made about some of the author's generalizations and the occasional quaintnesses of his style, this book at present stands alone in its field. It would be churlish to criticize Professor Beresford for not having written the book which he ought to have done. A work entitled New Towns of the Middle Ages which confined itself to the study of new plantations on virgin soil during the later thirteenth century would run the risk of distorting the perspective of urban growth. The mass of evidence which has been assembled in the Gazetteer to this volume should eliminate that risk. The appearance of Professor Beresford's work of both original research and synthesis should also serve to correct the previous unsatisfactory imbalance in medieval urban studies. To adapt Dr. Johnson (on learning in Scotland), knowledge of the history of town plantation was formerly like food in a besieged city. While everybody had some of it, no one had enough. Professor Beresford has rectified this situation by bringing the known facts into one volume. It is in a sense an interim report on work in progress, but that is no reason why it should not become a classic of its kind. M. G. A. VALE Warwick CHRISTIANITY IN BRITAIN, 300-700. Papers presented to the Conference on Christianity in Roman and sub-Roman Britain held at the University of Nottingham, April 1967. Edited by M. W. Barley and R. P. C. Hanson. Leicester University Press, 1969. Pp. xii, 220. 50s. The study of Christianity in Roman and sub-Roman Britain is a wide field, in which a variety of disciplines have come to play a vital part. The great value of this symposium is to have drawn together some important