Welsh Journals

the concluding section of the book. The organizing concept is not Powicke's 'community of the realm', but 'the making of the state' as the growth of towns and the activities of an increasing number of professional administrators, not to mention other changes, converted royal lordship into state power. Unlike Powicke, Harding devotes little attention to Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and he has chosen to include no maps and genealogical tables. His impressive command of the period is displayed in extensive bibliographical notes rather than, like Powicke, a lengthy commentary on the primary and secondary sources. The great merit of Harding's book, like that of all good textbooks, is the skilful way it summarizes a vast amount of often very recent research and writing. Amongst others, there are judicious discussions of the disputes over the nature of thirteenth- century parliaments, the problems of magnates facing demanding monarchs, the mixed fortunes of the knights, and the differentiation in the ranks of the peasantry. If on some controversial matters he is careful not to commit himself, on many more he has a clear view to present, such as when he emphasizes the political importance of the towns in the period. From time to time he neatly varies the pace and interest by examining the activities of representative figures in greater detail. Throughout, his training as a legal historian enables him to provide insights of a distinctive character. The main disadvantage of a book organized like this is that the course of important political changes such as the minority of Henry III or the crisis of 1297 has to be pieced together from sections in several chapters. Inevitably, too, some aspects of the period receive much fuller treatment than others. Robert Brady's doomed attempt to bring realism into the discussion of the early history of parliament is rightly stressed, but the influential views of writers such as Paul de Rapin and Thomas Carte are ignored. Harding also fails to draw attention to the parallels which seventeenth-century men saw between their own times and the thirteenth century, particularly between Oliver Cromwell and Simon de Montfort. On the other hand, the detail can sometimes become oppressive and the treatment slips into inconsistency. Students need to be reminded that historians are people with careers and interests sometimes unconnected with their academic work. Even so, Sir Michael Postan's friendship with Hugh Gaitskell and William Beveridge, 'later author of the Report' as Harding puts it, is unlikely to impress today's students. In any case, if this kind of detail merits inclusion at all, other historians, such as Tout and Stubbs, author of 'one of the great books of the nineteenth century', deserved similar treatment. Though specialists will notice the occasional slip or misconception, the number is small considering the wide-ranging character of the book. Writing in 1961 in the preface to the second edition of his volume, Powicke noted the surprising amount of work which had appeared in the preceding decade, and added that 'doubtless more is soon to come'. Not even he could have predicted how the increasing trickle of his own day would turn into the spate of ours. If, at times, Harding risks putting off some of the very people his book is intended to serve, he deserves our warm thanks for meeting the long-felt need for a book which looks at the thirteenth century as a whole and in the light of recent research. CLIVE H. KNOWLES Cardiff