Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

indiscipline of great subjects rendered powerful by their estates and retinues, the dynastic complications of the French crown, the reaping of the Scottish whirlwind-all these brought out Edward's inadequacies as a medieval monarch. (Relegated to a sentence is the great famine of 1314-17, arguably the greatest of these 'external' disadvantages.) In order to concentrate upon the 'human' side of the story, Mr. Hutchison deliberately eschews discussion in depth of well-known 'constitutional' topics like the coronation oath, the Ordinances and the Statute of York. It may be that historians from Stubbs onwards have over-emphasised 'the minutiae of administrative and constitutional research' (though no one could suggest that Tout, for instance, was blind to what he called 'the personal aspects of the reign'). Yet it is hard to believe that we can understand the predicament of Edward II without taking into account the substance of these scholarly debates. Indeed, the author is himself inconsistent in his treatment of such issues. He prints the text of the coronation oath, for instance, but does not seriously attempt to explain its crucial fourth clause. The basic difficulty may be indecision regarding the book's readership: those who know what 'maltotes' were (unexplained on p. 68) will not need to be assured (p. 65) that the Ordainers were 'far from democratic'. Both groups may raise an eyebrow at the inclusion of Aquinas (p. 18) as an ornament of the English church. Wales played a persistent part in Edward's destiny: as his youthful principality, as a focus of baronial ambitions, as the king's ultimate refuge. Mr. Hutchison makes little reference to these matters, though he mentions 'a wild contingent from Wales' in the royal army in 1310, and reminds us that the earliest record of Bannockburn occurs at Valle Crucis. A map of Wales in the early-fourteenth century (p. 17) incorporates the unhappy 'Gwynneth' and the ghost of Bere. Apropos the parliamentary summons of 1322, were the members from Wales Welsh? And on what grounds (in view of the 1327 returns) can they be described as coming 'from outside the king's principality'? It is difficult to imagine what answers there can be to such questions. In general, Mr. Hutchison's short book tells us nothing new about the king. What there is to say is not very inspiring. We may well conclude that Tout's preoccupation with the reign rather than the king was right and just. gwilym USHER Bangor HENRY VIII's SCOTTISH DIPLOMACY, 1513-1524: ENGLAND'S RELATIONS WITH THE REGENCY GOVERNMENT OF JAMES V. By Richard Glen Eaves. Exposition Press, New York, 1971. Pp. 197.$6.50. Diplomatic history is unfashionable. Despite its uninviting and rather old-fashioned title, this book, by a professor of History at the University