Welsh Journals

parliamentary elections (Clark), nor even office-holding (Harriss), what makes us suppose that 'property, family and magistracy' were 'principal concerns of this landed society' (Harriss) or that 'law was the single most significant aspect of government for late medieval landowners' (Carpenter)? Because our sources treat such matters does not mean that they occupied more than a fraction of landowners' time. Were not late medieval England and Wales by Tudor standards sadly under-governed countries? The quality of research and range of reference is impressive and sometimes astounding: a credit to McFarlane and late medieval studies. Yet one wishes for more. Why do the mythologies of royal dynasties feature so little? Where are the early modern perspectives on disputed elections, on the many-headed monster and the body politic? And why are Wales and the marches almost absent? Perhaps such regrets reflect the explosion in historical studies that has extended the subject matter and the contexts far beyond those that McFarlane ever knew? So, indeed, argue the editors, side by side with the number of voices to be accommodated, when explaining why the volume produces no consensus. That, however, is not the reason: the volume lacks a purpose, focus, and structure. Here is no reassessment of McFarlane's work, no updating, not even a treatment of his full range of interests: where are noble incomes, the profits of the Hundred Years'War, the Lollards and the Pastons? There is no place for his critics (Storey, Cam, Coss) and little for pupils working on such mainstream subjects as noble families, magnate feuds, the county community, or the gentry. They do not feature among the unrepresentative contributors where are the schools of Bristol and Keele? and their work is to be abandoned (and is already, apparently, unappreciated) as new directions are sought. As a book, The McFarlane Legacy fails. The opportunities for reassessment, assimilation, and redirection are missed. As a disparate collection of invigorating essays, however, it will be read and treasured for many years to come. MICHAEL HICKS Winchester A HISTORY OF MONEY. FROM ANCIENT Times to THE PRESENT DAY. By G. Davies. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1994. Pp. xix, 696. £ 39.95. Because it is the contention of this survey that in the past economists have been tempted 'to overestimate the purely economic, narrow and technical functions of money' at the expense of sufficient 'emphasis on fts wider