Welsh Journals

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Before the end of the fourteenth century, marcher lordship, shaken by the Black Death and deprived by settled peace of any obvious raison d'être, had already begun to decline. It gave way to an authority exercised by a middling class of lesser lords, gentry and freeholders who 'came in- creasingly during the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to dominate Marcher politics and Marcher society' (p. 228). Marcher society died harder than marcher lordship, but it too underwent irreversible changes between 1350 and 1450. Bondage of the old servile sort dis- appeared, without peasants' revolts, although Dr. Davies surmises that Glyndwr's popular support was partly agrarian protest. Increasingly too the freemen of Welsh communities ceased to cling to Welsh law (or refused to be confined to it?) and adopted 'English' law, chiefly in matters such as inheritance (especially primogeniture and the right of females to inherit) and the use of juries. Gradually the kindred base of Welsh society was broken down, though not without leaving a persistent legacy in 'overmuch boastying of the Nobilitie of their stocke' (p. 358). The inverted snobbery of the present-day south Walian is surely a recent, imported phenomenon. In considering the comparative histories of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland after Duke William's conquest of 1066 one must be struck by the importance of native kingship and its stage of development. English kingship was remarkably fully developed and the Conqueror became rex Anglorum almost overnight. In 'English' Cumbria and southern Scotland a faithful simulacrum of Welsh society and institutions lasted just long enough to make a fleeting appearance in the documents, usually misunderstood: biennial or triennial cow tribute, hospitality payments becoming locality-names (Conveth, Gwestfa), accusation of serjeants, puture of foresters, lineages such as 'Clenafren' in Galloway as late as 1296, complete with a pencenedl (Scotice 'kenkynnol') as with the Carrick Kennedys, above all place-names by the dozen and score, Lanark (Llannerch), Machan (Machen), Manor (Maenor), Penpont, etc. This northern 'Welshness' was largely swept away by a standardizing monarchy and ruling class. In Ireland there was a traumatically swift imposition of Anglo-Norman kingship in its Angevin phase, but applicable only to half or two-thirds of the island. Only in Wales was there so gradual and piecemeal a transition from old to new, Celtic to Germanic, insular to continental. The Marcher lordships, themselves born of change, applied a powerful brake on further change. Dr. Davies's study of this unique phenomenon will be read and re-read with profit and gratitude. G. W. S. BARROW Edinburgh. THE MERIONETH LAY SUBSIDY ROLL, 1292-3. Edited by K. Williams-Jones. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1976. Pp. cxliv, 136. £ 6.00. The publication in extenso of lay subsidy accounts was once a popular subject with English local record societies, but it fell out of fashion even before the recent escalation of printing costs. Apart from the prodigious labour required to transcribe and edit these documents, it is likely that potential editors were discouraged by the conclusion of many historians