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of post-conquest extents to illustrate pre-conquest rural settlement in a well-defined area of Gwynedd, while in 'Medieval Cardiganshire, a study in social origins' (1959) he showed that social and tenurial change was not confined to north Wales. In 'The Clenennau estate' (1947) he described how one family was able to add to its hereditary lands by purchase and consolidation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to create a modern landed estate, and in two articles published originally in the Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society (1939, 1940), he used the financial records of the medieval principality to show the gradual dissolution of the old system and the records of Elizabethan litigation in the Exchequer to illustrate encroachment by local gentry on bond lands. 'An Anglesey crown rental of the sixteenth century' (1940) showed the gwely in the later stages of its decline in the commote of Twrcelyn. But perhaps the most impressive piece of work in this volume is 'The gafael in Bangor 1939' (1942). This was based on a fifteenth-century rental of the propertiss of a Conway burgess, Bartholomew de Bolde, who had been buying land in the hinterland of the borough; not only did it indicate the effect of outside influences on a tenurial system in dissolution but it shed fresh light on the structure of the gafael, using topographical evidence as well as sources ranging as far afield as the tithe map to plot the gafaelion of Llwydfaen on the ground. This closely argued article does not make easy reading but it is a masterpiece of research. Finally, in 'Bardsey, a study in monastic origins' (1963), Jones Pierce discussed an agreement made in 1252 between the Augustinian abbey of Bardsey and the heirs of the clas of Aberdaron which it superseded, using it to interpret the medieval social structure in the westernmost part of Llyn and suggesting in passing that the heirs of at least one of the various clasau in Gwynedd converted by the princes to Augustinian houses did not go uncompensated. These, together with two general articles on pre-conquest society (1959, 1961) contributed to a French and a Swedish symposium respect- ively, make up the contents of this volume; it has been ably edited by Jones Pierce's friend and former pupil, Mr. J. Beverley Smith, who also contributes a short memoir. On re-reading these essays one is reminded again and again of the scale of the author's contribution to Welsh historiography; it may be platitudinous to say that Jones Pierce changed the face of his subject but it is true, none the less. Every one of these papers contains new insights and new suggestions and it is one of the scholastic tragedies of our time that the author was not spared to give us the projected major work of synthesis on the period. No one who is interested in the history of medieval Wales or the development of Welsh society can afford to be without this book; it is a worthy memorial to a scholar who, in the words of one obituary, 'revolutionised the inter- pretation of tribal Wales'. A. D.CARR Bangor.