Welsh Journals

largely beyond both his comprehension and control. Mr. Kirby, like Henry IV himself, would appear to have taken 'too narrow a view of his responsibilities' (McFarlane, op cit., p. 363). Such criticisms apart, this is a useful and workmanlike biography, readable in a sense that Wylie's 2,000-page history of the reign never was. Mr. Kirby is on the whole scrupulously accurate, but even he occasionally slips. The story (p. 52) that Roger Mortimer was recognized as heir presumptive to the throne of Richard II was dismissed long ago by T. F. Tout (Chapters in Medieval Administrative History, III, 396, n.l); the earl of Salisbury implicated in Norfolk's story in 1398 was John not Thomas Montagu (p. 47); to say that Henry's parents were cousins is to take a misleadingly medieval approach to the terminology of kinship (p. 12); and to be 'startled' (p. 50) that Londoners showed profound affection in 1398 for 'the son of one who had been so well hated but seventeen years before' is in itself a surprise. A week was not necessarily a long time in medieval politics; but, by any definition of political chronology, the passage of seventeen years and father to son is. On Welsh affairs Mr. Kirby has a great deal to say en passant about the revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr. There is, understandably, no novelty in his discussion and a few errors have crept in. To speak of 'the lordship of Ruthyn' [sic] as lying 'between Denbigh and Flint' is geographically inaccurate; while the correspondence which opens the account of the revolt (p. 106) has now been re-dated by Mr. J. B. Smith (Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, XIII, 250-60) to 1410-12. Likewise, the petition of Lord Grey of Codnor referred to on p. 189 belongs, in spite of Nicolas and Lloyd, to December 1402 not 1405; and it was Lawrence not Alexander Berkerolles who was besieged at Coity (p. 175). Errors such as these are, however, relatively few and do not detract from the value of this biography. Medieval kings have not often been well served by their biographers; but Henry IV has little cause for complaint. Mr. Kirby has written a life of him which is based solidly on the known historical facts, without gloss or conjecture. It will not be a best seller or the basis of a television script; but it should outlive many a more sensational biography. R. R. DAVIES University College, London WILLIAM WORCESTER, ITINERARIES. Edited by John H. Harvey. Oxford University Press, 1969. Pp. xxiv, 456. £ 6.50. William Worcester, the earliest notable English antiquary and topographer, was born in Bristol in 1415; in his later years he lived at Norwich and he died towards the end of the Yorkist period. Most of his career was devoted to the affairs of Sir John Fastolf (d. 1459), first as his secretary and afterwards as one of his executors. In his capacity as Fastolf's agent, Worcester had already become well-acquainted with many English counties long before he began extensive journeys undertaken