Welsh Journals

precise nature of the economy established by the colonists in this era of general European commercialization? What goods and services did they produce and how were they distributed? The great wide medieval market street of the royal town of Ardee impresses to this day, yet it is primarily as a scene of slaughter and rebellion that it features in this volume. The nature of town life between these occasional bloody affrays scarcely receives attention, nor do Dundalk and Drogheda fare much better. Colonisation and Conquest is, therefore, by no means the last word on the English in Louth, 1170-1330. Within its own specific remit, however, it is a work of formidable scholarship which deserves to be read by all with a serious interest in late medieval history on both sides of the Irish Sea. BRUCE M. S. CAMPBELL Belfast BERENGARIA. IN SEARCH OF RICHARD THE Lionheart's QUEEN. By Ann Trindade. Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1999. Pp. 240. £ 25.00. How was it that the Britons lost dominion over Britain to the English? According to Gerald de Barri in his Descriptio Kambrie Book II chapter 7, it was as punishment for their sins, in particular 'that hateful and wicked Sodomitical sin'. Even for a Welsh readership this may seem an odd way to start a review of a book on Berengaria of Navarre, but in so far as Trindade has a theme it is that the queen's fate was, in the last resort, determined by her relationship with her husband, and that his preference was for male partners. Hence Richard I's sexuality is a question to which she constantly returns-as indeed do Jean Flori and C. Stephen Jaeger (with opposing conclusions) in other books published in 1999. Gerald de Barri, however, though he both disapproved of the 'Sodom- itical sin' and was determined to blacken the reputation of all the Angevin kings, never criticized Richard-the king who put an end to his ambitions of a career in royal service-on grounds of 'unnatural lusts'. Gerald's silence, together with the silence of the king's enemies in France and Germany on the same score, suggests that on this issue she may be mistaken. This book, aimed at the general reader as well as at medievalists, is by far the best study of Berengaria so far (admittedly that is not saying much), and is particularly useful in drawing attention to the little-known work of Navarrese historians. Acutely aware that lack of evidence means that Berengaria is an unpromising subject for a conventional biography, Trindade has turned her into a peg on which to hang an introduction to the women's history movement, and a study of the roles which royal women were expected to play as daughters,