Welsh Journals

REVIEWS THOMAS OF LANCASTER Political history has made something of a comeback recently in the field of medieval studies, more particularly in the form of political biography. One need not look far to see the reasons why. They rest largely in a reaction against the inadequacies, or rather the imbalances, of the constitutional and administrative approaches which have for so long dominated the study of medieval politics. Nowadays the virtues of both these approaches are obvious, but so also are their limitations. Medieval constitutional history, whose credentials were so triumphantly and undeniably established by Bishop Stubbs, has never really been quite the same since the days of the attack on the Whig interpretation of history and of the impact, albeit indirect and unconscious, of Namier's analysis of political motivation. Medieval historians have never since felt quite comfortable in the company of constitutional ideas and have come to suspect that behind every constitutional bush lurks a mean-minded baron or a profit-seeking king. This scepticism towards political principles and constitutional ideas may well have gone too far in the field of medieval history as elsewhere; but the reaction against constitutional history, sensu stricto, has served a valuable purpose. No longer can the study of constitutional ideas and development be divorced from its precise political context, however unflattering and compromising that context might be. Just as Bishop Stubbs in the 1870s laid the foundations of modern critical study of the medieval constitution, so likewise T. F. Tout, in an equally magisterial and definitive style, in the 1920s laid the foundations of medieval administrative history. He brought to bear on the study of medieval politics, especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, his massive and precise knowledge of the working of medieval government, based on the incomparable records of the royal archives. He thereby effectively diverted the attention of medieval historians from older constitutional themes, such as the struggle between king and barons and the development of Parliament, and focussed it increasingly on the nature and organisation of executive power. There can never be any doubt that he and his successors greatly enriched our understanding of medieval government and politics; but, paradoxically if understandably, the very success of their methods and work has produced a reaction. The very richness of the royal archives, it is increasingly appreciated, has meant that the king's administration has loomed disproportionately large in studies of medieval politics, for historians are always prone to measure historical importance in terms of archival survival. The history of the royal administration and of its innovations and of the struggle between 1 Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322. A study in the reign of Edward II. By J. R. Maddicott, Oxford University Press, 1970. Pp. 390. £ 4.50.