Welsh Journals

The general reader, therefore, will probably find that Mr. Hurst's section on archaeological work contains most that is new. The article is not narrowly confined to technical archaeology, although there are import- ant sections on method. In particular, the arguments for open-area excavation, which has brought the best results in village investigations, are well set out. But Mr. Hurst is well aware of the historical significance of the digging that has been done, as can be seen in his discussions of the reasons for the declining use of timber as building material for peasant houses in the late middle ages. He is rightly suspicious of over-simplified explanations borrowed from the economic historians' theories about heavy inroads on timber resources up to the early-fourteenth century. The article, naturally, contains ideas which one would doubt as well as ones which one supports. Greater caution should be used about climatic interpretations in view of the doubts of the climatologists themselves. Assumptions by both Mr. Hurst and Professor Beresford that planned village layout can normally be taken as indicating seigneurial initiative need to be questioned (the case of Wawne in the East Riding, where lordly actions are lovingly documented by the author of the Meaux chronicle, should be further investigated). And although Mr. Hurst is right to urge caution in reading back too much from surviving vernacular buildings, can we safely assume that the peasant house was entirely a flimsy, do-it-yourself construction ? Did rural carpenters only construct solid roofs for the gentry ? This book is mainly devoted to the archaeology of the English village. There has been less work done on the settlements of the other nations in the British Isles, as is clear from the Welsh, Scottish and Irish contribu- tions. The use of the word 'village' in these countries is rightly open to question, but the history of medieval settlement as a whole seems to be in the melting pot. How universal was the contrast in the Celtic lands between the individual homesteads or halls of the noble and the free and the clustered settlements of the bondman ? What light can archaeology throw on problems of tenure and status distribution? Even in Wales, where most archaeological work has been done and where the medieval documentation is best, there seem to be crucial problems of chronology; but these seem nothing compared with those facing medieval settlement studies in Scotland and Ireland. Nevertheless, the problems posed here, though briefly stated, seem as fascinating as those which the English think they have nearly solved. R. H. HILTON Birmingham THE WELSH ELIZABETHAN CATHOLIC MARTYRS. By D. Aneurin Thomas. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1972. Pp. 331. £ 3.50. This work, first submitted as a thesis for the degree of M.A. Celtic (Liverpool), presents to the reader the only known extant 'trial documents' of the two Elizabethan Welsh martyrs, Richard Gwyn of Llanidloes, who was executed at Wrexham in 1584, and William Davies of Groes-yn-Eirias, executed in Beaumaris in 1593. The Latin text of Richard Gwyn's trial and