Welsh Journals

because (amongst other things) he had professed to Archbishop Ralph in 1115; while in 1148, on the other hand, the bishop-elect of St. David's was asked by Theobald, in addition to his profession, to take an oath not to entertain further metropolitical ambitions. This was required of his successors for the remainder of the century. Significantly enough, one of the Canterbury manuscript collections of professions comes to an abrupt end in the mid-twelfth century-victory over the Welsh Church made the exercise somehow less important. Dr. Richter has produced a sound edition of the texts (aided by a valuable palaeographical sortie by Professor T. J. Brown) and has provided the historian with a commentary on their historical value. Whether a 'more systematic study' will in fact by itself produce a genuinely novel contribution to the history of the medieval province of Canterbury is perhaps an open question. IFOR ROWLANDS Swansea BANKERS TO THE CROWN. By Richard W. Kaeuper. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1973. Pp. 279.$12.50. As Kaeuper readily acknowledges, the activities of Italian entrepreneurs on the continent and in Britain are a well-reconnoitered subject by such historians as Sapori, Renouard, de Roover and Fryde. The conclusions he reaches here, previewed in volume VI of this Review and followed up in a study of the Florentine firm of the Frescobaldi in England in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, vol. X (1973), do not represent a substantially new interpretation, either in technical detail or in the broader terms of the banker's moral and economic position in the society of western Europe. He shows a command of the material in the Public Record Office and the published sources, and he marshals a great deal of detail to show how for twenty-two years these mercatores regni enjoyed a 'special relationship with Edward I' and became virtually a 'branch of English government'. In exchange for various privileges and on the security of royal revenue-in particular, the wool custom-the Riccardi gave the government the liquidity it lacked for all its administrative achievements. For the historian of Wales, it will be of interest that Edward's 'Welsh campaigns were supported by the most advanced finances of western Europe'. The flexible and considerable financial resources the Riccardi made available to Edward allowed him the sustained cam- paigning and the massive castle-building needed to overcome resistance in north Wales. Despite the large amount of information at his command, Kaeuper is commendably cautious in his use of figures, and avoids any temptation to draw up over-ambitious statistical tables or balance sheets. However, the energetic and resourceful merchants from Lucca themselves remain rather outside this study. This is seen in Kaeuper's uncertain handling of their names. More seriously, comparatively little is said about the company itself, its organization and the relations between its British and European branches, so crucial, as Kaeuper points out, for an under- standing of their fall in 1294. If the company was as centralized as he