Welsh Journals

Scottish Society IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Edited by Jennifer M. Brown. Edward Arnold, London. 1977. Pp. 288. £ 11.00. Of all the centuries of Scottish history the fifteenth century has probably been the most neglected. The pioneer works of E. W. M. Balfour-Melville and A. I. Dunlop aroused no rapture, and other historians continued to touch up the overpainted personages and themes of more fashionable eras. Betwixt the wars of independence and the reformation there could be found, so it seemed, only the aimless feuds and assassinations of kings and nobles, while the decaying church tottered toward its inevitable fall. There was no awareness that this was the one entire century in which Scotland has functioned as a viable nation state, independent of England and not unduly subservient to any other power. Past neglect should be dispelled by the collection of essays edited by Jennifer Brown. In each of the ten essays the distinctiveness and intrinsic interest of the age are conveyed, though with varying success. Geoffrey Stell provides an elegant and well-illustrated study of developments in building, both ecclesiastical and secular, while John MacQueen pieces together the precious fragments of the writers in middle Scots who hold a mirror to the age. Its modestly widening horizons are shown in Barbara Crawford's examination of the growth of Scottish connections with Scandinavia. The more basic relationships with England and France are studied by Norman Macdougall, who detects a shift towards a permanent English alliance, conveniently closing his account in 1502 rather than in 1513. James Robertson finds that it was not a dark age of Scots law and hints at further illumination to come. S. G. E. Lythe finds vitality in economic life, paying little heed to the downward trend in exports docu- mented in the exchequer rolls. Ian Cowan furnishes much information on the social role of the church but deduces nothing new, concluding some- what tritely that the struggle to realize the church's ideal 'contributed greatly to the development of Scottish society'. In the inter-related studies of political history and narrative sources Jennifer Brown and Norman Macdougall are more venturesome. The former would stress mutual interest rather than conflict in the relationship of crown and nobility, and the latter would, perhaps too confidently, dismiss altogether the contrary testimony of most chroniclers and early historians. Thus, the successive ruinations of the Albany Stewarts, the Livingstons, the Black Douglases, the Boyds and James Ill's brothers, not to mention the corresponding assassinations of James I and James III, become ripples on a placid lake; nor do the 'favourites' of James III float like swans on the surface for they have taken wing to join the unicorns in mythology. In the new interpretation assumption and assertion occasion- ally take the place of careful argument. It is refreshing to find that the 'favourites' reappear large as life in John MacQueen's essay. He argues, moreover, that James I's Kingis Quair was 'programmatic' — intended to direct Scots poetry into new channels. Can it be denied on the more substantial basis of James's legislation and actions that there was also a political programme, and one that the next three Jameses continued to pursue? Four successive kings hacked their way to power in an era of dynamic political change, not static harmony. The