Welsh Journals

This sprang in part from the unscrupulous actions of the king and his favourite, but also from the inability of a narrowly-based regime to resolve conflicts and repress disorder. By showing the extent and depth of the scar left by Edward II's rule, Dr. Fryde highlights Edward Ill's healing touch. On a longer view, she may help us to understand why memories of Edward's time remained lively and influential in the 1380s and 1390s. But in the political climate of 1307-30, expressions of principle were perhaps more than 'arguments which the magnates bandied about only as transient weapons in a bitter political struggle' (p. 3). Men, from the king downwards, clutched the law to themselves as a protection when their lives and the future of their houses were at stake; and at such times they had no difficulty in believing what they said. Possibly there is more room than Dr. Fryde allows amidst today's preoccupations for the older learning. ROBIN FRAME Durham. PATRONAGE, PEDIGREE AND POWER IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND. Edited by Charles Ross. Alan Sutton, Gloucester, 1979. Pp. 225. £ 6.95. This well-produced volume of eight papers, the outcome of a symposium on the history of late-medieval England held in the University of Bristol in July 1978, provides further evidence of the striking activity in recent years in research in fifteenth-century English history among the younger generation of historians. All the contributors are described as having been 'either directly or indirectly pupils of the late K. B. McFarlane (even unto the third generation)' but it is perhaps somewhat out-of-date to say that McFarlane's teaching and writing inspired 'the only school that fifteenth-century historiography has had'. Most of the contributors were former students of history at Bristol, where Professor Charles Ross has built up a markedly successful school of historiography in this field, and has himself produced a number of works indispensable to the study of the period, especially his major work, Edward IV, published in 1974. Several other symposia have been held in this field at different locations since the precedent was set in Cardiff in 1970, and the range of research undertaken and the amount of discussion that has gone on during the last three or four decades have changed the face of fifteenth-century historiography and brought an immeasurably higher degree of realism into our interpretations of English history during that period. Ross's introduction to the volume gives an excellent brief survey of its contents and almost makes a review redundant, except, no doubt for the purpose, as it were, of spreading the gospel further, and making a few comments inappropriate for an editor to make. Charles Ross himself points out that no specific theme was suggested to the contributors, and although the title of the volume is vague enough to cover a multitude of phenomena, it is hardly possible to say that the eight papers display much unity of theme. Perhaps half of them can be said to come strictly under the umbrella, but the others are less well aligned.