Welsh Journals

lord and his men' (p. 70), while the common weal 'closely reflected the interests of the lord's particular supporters' (p. 67). Conditioned by this struggle to maintain and extend their own authority, they were ill fitted to exercise the authority of the king on behalf of the whole realm. Dr Watts sees Henry VI as a cipher, wholly supine, incapable of any political initiative. Some historians assert that he was selectively and erratically active, but all agree that he failed to provide the sustained public will required for royal government. How far could the nobility supply that? Dr Watts's exhaustive examination of how and by whom acts of government were authorized during the first decade of Henry's 'personal rule' (1436-45) shows how the council encouraged the king to take an active role while periodically falling back on quasi-conciliar rule. By the time of the king's marriage the earl of Suffolk had secured the tacit assent of the lords and the co-operation of the courtiers for his attempt to impersonate royal authority. In a major and welcome revision of Suffolk's position, Watts stresses that he was not a royal favourite in the mould of Gaveston or de Vere but a surrogate for Henry's kingship. He and the associated lords were endeavouring 'to preserve the king's authority, the first and most basic interest of the communitas regni' (p. 251). If, ultimately, ministers could not monopolize the royal will in the context of 'informal and non-exclusive counsel' through which Suffolk operated, and the experiment ended in disaster, 'it was the king not his ministers who must bear the responsibility' (p. 207). Yet Suffolk's fall as well as marking a systemic failure convicted a political elite of misrule, by enriching themselves from Henry's benevolence, interpreting justice and the common weal in terms of their own interests, neglecting to defend the realm, and excluding the voice of the communitas. As Watts observes (p. 248), the events of 1450 revealed a 'complete divorce' between the political assumptions of the lords and those of the communitas, which now emerged as a political force in its own right. Whereas hitherto politics had turned on whether royal authority should be mediated though a council or the court, the question now was who spoke for the common weal. When Richard of York endorsed the parliamentary programme of reform he asserted a political authority to act on behalf of the common weal. For the monarchy, however, the common weal resided in obedience to its authority. In a subtle and sustained analysis Watts traces these conflicting viewpoints through the politics of the decade. He shows how the twists and changes of political (and military) fortune in these years vindicated first York's viewpoint (at the battle of St Albans) then the queen's (in the Ludford campaign) with the Yorkists' triumphant return in 1460 receiving endorsement from the politically articulate society of the south-east. It could thus be claimed that the events of 1450-60 decisively