Welsh Journals

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volume series of editions of the poetry under Professor Gruffydd's general editorship, which provides the firm textual foundation for these interpretative studies. All aspects of the poetry are covered, including language, metrics, bardic learning, political and social background, and manuscript preservation, as well as parallels from the court poetry of Ireland and Scotland. Of particular interest to the historian will be G. A. Williams's theory that the two poems attributed to Owain Cyfeiliog of Powys were in fact composed by Cynddelw, Rhian Andrews's detailed study of Bleddyn Fardd's elegies to the three sons of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, and J. Beverley Smith's discussion of the tension between Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and the nobility of Gwynedd.] DAFYDD JOHNSTON Abertawe/Swansea HENRY VI AND THE Politics OF KINGSHIP. By John Watts. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xvii, 399. £ 40.00 (US$59.95). In this book the story of how England lurched towards civil war in the mid- fifteenth century is told not in the usual terms of competing factions and interests but as a structural failure of monarchical government. That required rule by an active king supported by an obedient nobility. A model for kingship was provided in the contemporary 'mirrors for princes' and other advice literature. From these Dr Watts draws a somewhat Hobbesian picture of royal authority. King and realm were parts of one body, a persona publica, the king possessing a unique and sovereign authority as representative of the common weal/will of his people. His omission of the 'descending' authority which kings held from God is surprising, not least because it was vividly present to the minds of Richard II, Henry V and, surely, Henry VI. The argument of the book is that Henry VTs inability to exercise a representative public will forced the lords to impersonate this in divers ways. Regrettably, if understandably, the 'mirrors' have little to say about the constitutional functions of lords. Their duty was to counsel the king, defend him and the realm in arms, and ensure justice and order; but these did not give them a collective function in government. Watts suggests an analogy between their representative rule in the shires and the king's in the realm. But where the latter was conferred from above and inherent in kingship, the rule of lords rested on their lands, social eminence, and the sustaining of their followers' interests (pp. 63-76). Lordship extended only to those who accepted it, and was always open to challenge; in the rule of his 'country', the lord's justice was 'what suited the