Welsh Journals

respectively a back-reference to Aneirin and an extreme hyperbole. But the simple elegance of a dictum such as 'For the Gogynfeirdd the purpose of poetry was not narra- tion but declaration'-and there are many such-can reshape one's whole comprehension of the subject. Limitations of space obviously prevented a discussion of such technical problems as manuscript survival and textual transmission, especially as there are no apparent answers, especially to that ever-frustrating question, what must we have lost, if such a gifted poet as Peryf ap Cedifor is only represented in the canon by two poems. Hitherto, in the absence of published editions, historians (notably J. E. Lloyd and Professor Rees Davies) have made cautious though effective use of the Gogynfeirdd to illuminate their studies. Sixteen years after its first publication, Professor Williams's work still provides the essential literary, cultural and linguistic introduction to these poets; final publication of the edited texts will enable us literally to re-view the history and culture of that confused but exciting period. GERALD MORGAN Aberystwyth SIMON DE MONTFORT. By J. R. Maddicott. Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xxv, 404. £ 35.00. Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester (c. 1208-65), virtual ruler of England in 1264-65, is one of the most famous and controversial figures in English medieval history. Dr. John Maddicott's excellent, beautifully written, and even quite nicely illus- trated, biography is the first full-length treatment of this formidable subject since the 1960s. It is a major revision, based on much new manuscript material, and it offers a synthesis of the discoveries generated by the recent renaissance in thirteenth-century studies, to which Dr. Maddicott himself has already made such a distinguished contri- bution. Its most striking improvement on the standard works of C. Bemont and M. W. Labarge is its much more thorough and stimulating biographical detail. Maddicott, quite rightly, portrays Montfort as one of those talented, cosmopolitan, knightly figures recruited, like William Marshall, as vital royal agents. His origins from border stock courted by French and English kings alike, his famous crusading father and namesake (whose distinctive seal he copied, a point missed by Maddicott), his own celebrated, if mysterious, military experience, even his good looks and clever eloquence, guaranteed him a spectacular career and the favour and friendship, for most of it, of Louis IX and Henry III, capped by marrying Henry's sister in 1238. Maddicott analyses systemati- cally, for the first time, the lands gradually acquired by Montfort in England once he had been recruited by Henry III in the 1230s; he also outlines, using new charter evidence, Montfort's surprisingly small, if politically heavyweight, Midlands affinity, a valuable addition to our knowledge of thirteenth-century 'bastard feudalism'. We are given insights into Montfort as a harsh and parsimonious (except when spending on