Welsh Journals

'The Seventh Century and Before' and large parts of the subsequent chapters also discuss the period of the English invasions and settlements. A comprehensive Bibliography is designed in part to compensate. The discussion of each problem is strikingly meticulous and thorough. The presentation is lucid and terse. Professor Sawyer wastes few words: for the early period he draws deeply on researches into the British background but of the magic name Arthur, not a mention. Here as elsewhere the exposition is crystal clear. We know where the author stands and how he and others have reached their conclusions. General readers cannot but benefit from the crisp comments on Domesday Book, or on the limitations of charter evidence, or the description of late-eleventh-century towns. All will gain from the way in which arguments from The Age of the Vikings have assumed a new guise in the discussion of the landscape and of settlement. Because of Professor Sawyer's approach it is also apparent which subjects have attracted least recent attention. For the present reviewer the most striking lacuna concerns the nature of the earldoms of late Anglo- Saxon England. No one has attempted a synthesis since Freeman. Subse- quent isolated researches need to be brought together. It may be, for example, that the loosening of the earl's grip on the archbishopric of Canterbury effected at Penenden Heath should make us less complacent about the actual and potential power of the late Old English monarchy over the Church. On a hoary old point, Professor Sawyer's forceful apologia for Aethelred II (pp. 128-30) may be a warning that the impressive institutional facade may conceal serious political problems. Earlier, 'perhaps his (Alfred's) greatest achievement' was 'to persuade his people to make efforts "for the common profit of the kingdom" (p. 123). In short he overcame apathy as well as the Vikings. The Conqueror used more direct methods, bringing in an unheard-of number of hired troops in 1085. It may be that early-medieval monarchies were by nature aggressive and ill-equipped to muster resources and men for defence. To understand the Scandinavian settlements it might help to look a little more closely at Normandy. For the power as well as the institutions of the late Old English monarchy we certainly need to look much more deeply into Europe. Some small criticisms: Roger de Beaumont is not the most convincing example of an Anglo-Norman baron with large cross-Channel estates since he held very little land in England and on the evidence of charter witness- lists rarely visited the country. The estates of Thurkill of Warwick passed to Henry, not Hugh, de Beaumont. More seriously, the inevitable conse- quence of Professor Sawyer's method is that some problems are somewhat sparsely treated. While this is usually necessary and entirely acceptable, newcomers to the subject may be ill-served by the brusque eleven lines devoted to 'the free peasantry of the Danelaw' (p. 178). But to criticise is to mislead. The fine qualities of this book are manifest. It is an excellent work of synthesis which presents even the most unsympathetic material in a vivid way. It must be essential reading for all who tackle the early centuries of British history. DAVID R. BATES Cardiff