Welsh Journals

the author's wide-ranging familiarity with other literatures, and his ability to place the Welsh tradition in a broader, European context, especially in matters of religion. It is this international perspective which has been the keynote of the majority of Breeze's many publications over the last fifteen years or so, and his almost unique contribution to our appreciation of otherwise unexplored byways of our medieval literary heritage. That is what he does best. His chief mistake in the present context was, in my opinion, to try to squeeze that interest and expertise into the inappropriate format of a book aimed at 'newcomers to the subject'. CHRISTINE JAMES Swansea LAw AND DISORDER IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND. THE Dublin Parliament OF 1297. Edited by James Lydon. Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1997. Pp. 171. £ 30.00. The year 1297 was something of an annus mirabilis-or should it be horribilis?-in the history of the British Isles. It witnessed a very dangerous stand-off between Edward I and some of his major barons (some of whose secret assemblies were held in the March of Wales); it also, of course, witnessed the crushing English defeat at the hands of the Scots at Stirling Bridge. In Ireland the rapidly deteriorating security position promoted the summoning of the first Irish parliamentary assembly for which a substantial record of its proceedings survives. It is the twelve statutes issued by this parliament which is the point of departure of the eight essays assembled in this volume. The essays may be said to fall into two broad categories which tell us something about the current state of the historiography of medieval Ireland. Four of them- the two by James Lydon and one each by Gerard McGrath and Philomena Connolly-keep carefully to the political and institutional high road. They are, of course, none the worse for that and would have greatly impressed Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven (to whose memory the volume is very appropriately addressed). They represent a view of the world as seen from Dublin and through the eyes of its governmental cadre and its terminology. Theirs is the world of plena potestas, the creation of shires, salvation by legislation, and Ireland as an annex, reflection and colony of England. There is no harm in their rather cut-and-dried, slightly old-fashioned approach, as long as we remember that all world-views, including and perhaps especially those of governmental documents, are