Welsh Journals

In a volume dedicated to S. B. Chrimes, the reviewer may be forgiven for highlighting the late-medieval essays. This means less than adequate notice for the nine papers which deal with more modern times. Lionel Williams discusses the relations between the Crown and the provincial immigrant communities in Elizabethan England. Ivan Roots analyses the processes of law-making in the second Protectorate Parliament, and C. D. Chandaman successfully exonerates the parliament of 1685 from the charges of reckless and wilful prodigality levelled against it. Ranging widely in point of time, Dorothy Marshall considers the role of the justice of-the peace in social administration. Ursula Henriques argues that the influence of Jeremy Bentham on social reform might have been greater if he had possessed more administrative experience as well as more common sense. In a stimulating discussion of 'Some Limitations of the Age of Reform', Norman McCord maintains that, whatever its failures, the period 'showed an oligarchy, on the whole well-meaning, reacting with inadequate resources to complex and unprecedented problems': it does not deserve, he concludes, 'the excessive condemnation of posterity'. E. W. Edwards analyses the reasons for 'the rare if not unique harmony' which prevailed between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary (Lord Lansdowne) in the Balfour government of 1902-5 (not just the fact that Balfour had been Lansdowne's fag at Eton). G. O. Pierce, in a valuable essay, illuminates the highly equivocal and self- interested part played by Lloyd George in the troubled parliamentary history of the 'Coercion of Wales' Act of 1904. Without exception the essays in this most handsomely-produced volume are of high quality and interest, and it forms a fitting tribute to a notable historian of medieval government. It ends with a list of the principal writings of S. B. Chrimes, compiled by Nora Temple. CHARLES ROSS Bristol. SCOTLAND: THE LATER MIDDLE AGES (Edinburgh History of Scotland, vol. II). By Ranald Nicholson. Edinburgh, 1974. Pp. xvi, 695. £ 7.50. Professor Nicholson's book deals with the history of Scotland from the death of Alexander III to the battle of Flodden. His coverage of the period is uneven: he devotes four chapters to the 'Great Cause' and the Anglo-Scottish conflict between 1296 and 1328, in the course of which he offers some criticism of Professor Barrow's reliance upon the concept of the community of the realm in explaining the cohesion of the Scottish kingdom during Edward I's assault upon it. The reigns of David II and the first two Stewarts are dealt with more cursorily: as is to be expected, he offers a favourable interpretation of David II, but is perhaps a little harsh on his two successors, criticizing Robert II for failing to maintain the governmental efficiency, especially in financial matters, that charac- terized David's reign. The whole of the rest of the book-ten chapters-is devoted to the reigns of James I-IV. In terms of subject matter, too, Professor Nicholson's coverage is uneven. Apart from two stimulating and suggestive chapters on society and the economy, and some pages on the literature of the aureate age, the book concentrates firmly on political history.