Welsh Journals

in post-Edwardian Wales. Rosenthal virtually omits nobility from any role in urban or commercial affairs and, even more surprisingly, has little to say about military activities (Hundred Years War? Wars of the Roses?). He does not discuss whether or not they answered calls to chivalry and war either in religious crusades into the Mediterranean or on royal campaigns into France. As a class, Rosenthal's nobility tend towards dull, unadven- turous estate-managers, securing (or losing?) family fortunes by their dependence upon royal-parliamentarian connections. They become more vivacious and credible when he reverts to conventional descriptions of the exploits, designs, and private lives of individuals. Perhaps McFarlane's emphasis on particular noble families and prosopographical analysis remains preferable and necessary. The choice of documents illustrates Rosenthal's themes reasonably well. They overwhelmingly derive from royal and parliamentary collections, with some additional estate materials. A total of 126 documentary pieces is provided and all but twelve have been printed elsewhere, many in calendered form only. I have checked seventy-two (or fifty-seven per cent) of these texts against the versions used by Rosenthal. Of these, he trans- lated eight from Latin and four from French texts in exceptionally faithful and clear renderings. But the other results of my scrutiny are dismal: twenty-six of the seventy-two are cited incorrectly or, at least, the reference to the source is incomplete; twenty-one are given with words and lines omitted but without any acknowledgment or ellipses; three are wrongly dated; forty-four contain errors in transcription that are unrelated to Rosenthal's modernizing of texts; and only eight are accurately presented. The most appalling result is that twenty-two of these documents contain errors that seriously affect the textual meanings: 1, 6.b, 16.b, 30.a, 31.a-c, 32.a, 34.a, 34.c-e, 35, 36.c, 37, 52.c, 54.a-b, 61, 63.a, 67.a, and 71.b. We read ''the court of England" in Rosenthal's document 31.b, but the original text has 'the courtesy of England' pertinent to rights of jointure. He misreads numerous words straight from the Calendars: he has 'revenue' instead of 'rent' (6.b), 'lordships' become 'lands' (35), and at one place 'London" should be 'Lincoln' (30) while in another 'Lincoln' should be 'London' (34.d). One document (52.c) cannot be found in Statutes of the Realm at or near Rosenthal's citation. This, then, is not a good model to set before students. As a scholarly publication it has too many shortcomings to deserve wide circulation and confidence. DE LLOYD J. GUTH Stevens Point, Wisconsin CROWN AND NOBILITY, 1450-1509. By J. R. Lander. Edward Arnold, 1976. Pp. x, 340. £ 9.95. POLITICS AND POWER IN ENGLAND, 1450-1509. By J. R. Lander. Edward Arnold, 1976. Pp. 68. £ 1.95. Ten articles and essays published between 1956 and 1972 and reprinted in this volume constitute the bulk of Professor J. R. Lander's distinguished and challenging contribution to recent work on fifteenth-century England