Welsh Journals

in such cases. The present reviewer's major regret is that this bibliography was not designed more specifically as a guide to the literature on health and medical care in Wales. It is of limited value to the medical anthro- pology of Wales; the literature on such traditions as the Meddygon Myddfai is mostly included in the appendix, while much else in popular medicine is bypassed. For the more recent period no reference is made to sources on the Miners' Medical Aid Societies-organisations finding no counterparts elsewhere. It is hoped that these aspects of Welsh medicine will be covered in future bibliographies sponsored by the National Library of Wales. CHARLES WEBSTER Corpus Christi College, Oxford. THE TYRANNY AND FALL OF EDWARD II, 1321-1326. By Natalie Fryde. Cambridge University Press, 1979. Pp. x, 301. £ 12.00. The last phase of Edward II's reign is a neglected, and in some ways singularly unattractive, chapter of English political history. Dr. Fryde has now given us a vigorous account of these years, together with a survey of the earlier part of the reign and a valuable Epilogue on the minority of Edward III. Her approach is in the recent tradition: the emphasis falls on money, land and naked power, rather than the constitutional ideas and administrative structures that preoccupied a former generation of historians. The 1320s, more than most periods, lend themselves to this approach. An understanding of the politics of an age when men disclosed so little of themselves on parchment depends in large measure on the patient piecing together of details about landholding and about family and other relationships. And it must be said that here the details are not always impeccable. For example, Dr. Fryde gets into an alarming tangle over the husbands of Elizabeth de Burgh, the youngest of the Gloucester heiresses (pp. 34, 41, 111); and this reviewer is perhaps bound to remark that almost every reference to Ireland seems to have invited an invasion of gremlins. But despite these blemishes, the general argument of the book carries conviction. The reader-while grateful for Dr. Fryde's avoidance of facile psychologizing-may regret the absence of a sustained portrait of the king and the men around him. Nonetheless, it soon becomes clear that she has arrived at a decided view of Edward II himself: he emerges, not as ineffective, but as watchful, rapacious and mean. This assessment is closely connected with one of the book's main achievements: its de- piction of the insecurity that poisoned English political society during and after the civil war of 1321-22. Hard work among the financial sources has enabled Dr. Fryde to show that Edward, having proved incapable of retaining the support of his greater subjects, put his trust instead in the amassing of treasure; at the end his wealth lumbered uselessly with him on his flight westwards. Hugh Despenser's greed was accompanied by a terror of sorcery. And in the country at large dispossession and death stalked not just the higher nobility but also their retainers and tenants.