Welsh Journals

AYMER DE VALENCE, EARL OF PEMBROKE, 1307-1324: Baronial Politics in the reign of Edward II. By J. R. S. Phillips. Oxford University Press, 1972. Pp. ix, 379. £ 6.50. The reign of Edward II is one of the historical periods presently undergoing reassessment. Dr. Maddicott's study of Thomas of Lancaster is worthily followed by a detailed account of Pembroke's political career. Reaction against accepted views was inevitable: Dr. Phillips draws attention to the 'air of profound unreality' which overhangs so much controversy about the significance of the reign. To read the substantial literature on the subject is to conclude, for instance, that the period is as full of 'constitutional documents' as Hamlet is of quotations: forms thrown together in unprecedented circumstances by baffled men under stress have been subjected to detailed analysis and credited with exces- sively sophisticated intent. Even more remarkable is a specific aberration which Dr. Phillips considers at length. Part of his fifth chapter is devoted to the historiography of the so-called 'Middle Party' cautiously shadowed forth by Stubbs and given almost institutional force by Tout and Conway Davies. The emergence of the concept came at an odd moment. At the very time when eighteenth-century Whigs and Tories were being cast into an unprincipled limbo, fourteenth-century barons were being credited with high-principled (and persistent) 'opposition to the crown', while their temporary groupings were held to suggest opinions and intentions of a coherent kind. Pembroke's social and tenurial position necessarily involved him in the politics of the reign. While not in the super-magnate class of Lancaster or Gilbert de Clare, his inheritance made him one of the richest of the barons. Even so, he lacked a 'localised power-base' like that enjoyed, for instance, by Lancaster in the north midlands. Pembroke's holdings were widely scattered, with the core of their value in eastern England. (Despite his title and his retention of vestigial palatine rights in the county of Pembroke, the earl drew only about a tenth of his income from Wales.) Like many of his peers, Pembroke could call upon the services of indentured retainers, but these were usually few in number, they were not drawn exclusively from particular areas, and there was no apparent attempt to build up their numbers at moments of crisis. Indeed, moments of crisis were probably uncongenial to Pembroke: the author sees him as 'essentially a fair-weather politician'. Experienced in war and diplomacy, devoted equally to the institution of the monarchy and the person of the king, Aymer de Valence was a man of moderate abilities who would have made more of a mark had he reached his prime under either the first or the third Edward. Faced by the continual tensions and genuine dilemmas of their day, he and his kind were forced into playing parts which they did not seek and for which they were not fitted by experience and convention. In the circumstances it was almost inevitable that men like Pembroke should often appear confused and ineffectual. Dr. Phillips, like Edward's contemporaries, sees the root cause of England's troubles in the king's unsuitability as a ruler. Despite his undoubted advantages-the mystique of kingship, the power of patronage, the absence of credible alternatives­iEdward's failure to abide