Welsh Journals

WHITE MONKS IN GWENT AND THE BORDER. By David H. Williams. Griffin Press, Pontypool, 1976. Pp. xii, 169. £ 4.00 cloth bound, £ 3.30 card cover. On page ninety-four of this book the author quotes with evident feeling the observations of the poet Thomas Churchyard (1587) on what remained of the abbey of Tintern: As old a sell, as is within that land, Where divers things hath bene right worthie note, Whereof as yet, the troth I have not gote In his preface, too, he comments with regret on a situation with which historians of Welsh monasteries are all too familiar-how 'the relative paucity of documentary evidence makes a fully balanced history an im- possibility. Too often the monasteries find contemporaneous mention only in times of trouble and the records are silent for long periods of stability and spiritual life.' Nevertheless, Mr. Williams has devoted himself with exemplary assiduity for a number of years to the untiring pursuit of all surviving materials relating to Welsh Cistercian houses. Over a decade ago he began publishing a series of detailed articles on Welsh Cistercian abbeys and followed this up with an important book, The Welsh Cistercians: Aspects of their Economic History (1969). In the work here being noticed he has reproduced in expanded form articles which first appeared in the Monmouthshire Antiquary between 1964 and 1967. He has concentrated on four Cistercian monasteries which lay within the south-eastern March of Wales: one of them-Dore-was situated in the lordship of Ewyas Harold, within the diocese of Hereford, on the very boundary of Wales; and the other three-Grace Dieu, Llantarnam, and Tintern-all fell within the confines of Gwent. Only Llantarnam derived its origins from the 'Welsh' wing of Cistercian activity; the remainder were 'Anglo-Welsh' in inspiration, Grace Dieu being a daughter of Dore. The author has scoured widely and diligently among surviving sources, manu- script and printed, and has brought together a large number of scattered references. Unless some unsuspected cache of materials lies hidden some- where, it seems unlikely that any very significant items of information remain to be added. Of the four houses under discussion, Dore (pp. 1-58) and Tintern (pp. 94-146) have yielded much the richest harvest of material; the gleanings for Grace Dieu (pp. 59-75) and Llantarnam (pp. 76-93) are decidedly leaner and more insubstantial. As befits an accomplished histori- cal geographer, the author has provided a number of excellently clear maps, plans and diagrams. The photographic illustrations, although well-chosen and unhackneyed, are not as helpful as they might have been, mainly because the definition appears to have suffered as a result of their not being reproduced on art paper. The chapter on each house is divided into two broad sections. The first of these provides a general outline of the history of the house up to its suppression, or rather a chronological itemization of such fragments of information as survive. The second section relates the economic history of the abbey. The analyses of sources of income and the examination of the topography of the granges and the exploitation of their resources are the most penetrating and useful aspects of his work. Its weakness is the