Welsh Journals

B. T. Hudson ('The changing economy of the Irish Sea province') assesses and analyses from a wide and disparate but naturally haphazard range of material the changing vicissitudes of trade and commerce in the Irish Sea across four centuries. Robert Bartlett ('Cults of Irish, Scottish and Welsh saints in twelfth-century England') traces how certain saints' cults (for example, David's) came to be more widely disseminated even though their Lives might be re- written with a sense of cultural superiority by Anglo-Norman hagiographers. Increasingly, however, argues Maire Herbert ('Sea-divided Gaels?'), the political community in Ireland defined itself by its island territory, confining transinsular associations to a cultural or familial context. Similarly, Dauvit Broun ('Anglo- French acculturation and the Irish element in Scottish identity') sees an earlier 'pan-Gaelic fraternity' (p. 13 5) as fractured by the growing concept of the Scots as 'a nation in their own right' (p. 136), a nation in which the acquisition of Anglo-French culture was not necessarily exclusive of its Gaelic heritage. The way in which ruling families on the extremities of a kingdom could be brought within the same cultural mix is illustrated by R. A. McDonald ('Coming in from the margins; the descendants of Somerled and cultural accommodation in the Hebrides'), who charts the transformation of sea-kings into 'barons of the realm of Scotland', marrying into the families of the Scottish nobility and accepting a feudal relationship with the Scottish crown The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169 'interrupted', writes Sean Duffy ('The 1169 invasion as a turning-point in Irish-Welsh relations'), 'though it certainly did not obliterate, earlier patterns of contact between the two countries' (p.98). The harsh penalties of failed political and military actions, at least outside the charmed regions where 'chivalrous compassion' (largely) prevailed, are highlighted by John Gillingham ('Killing and mutilating political enemies in the British Isles') with specific reference to Celtic regions, arguing, however, that violent conflict (in Ireland) was 'as much bound by informal rules of acceptability as conflict elsewhere' (p. 118) and noting the rise of political killings in Britain from the early fourteenth century onwards. M. T. Flanagan ('John de Coucy, the first Ulster plantation and Irish church men') examines the Church in Ulster under an Anglo-Norman lord whose relatively poor status in England obliged him to adopt a conciliatory policy of co- operation with Irish churchmen to advance the process of English colonisation but who remained vulnerable to the English crown's displeasure. A study by K. J. Stringer ('Nobility and identity in medieval Britain and Ireland: The de Vescy family') pursues the theme of vulnerability to royal displeasure only this time with one of the mightiest families in the land and brings the volume to a gripping conclusion by illustrating how tensions could arise between the regional responsibilities and entanglements of such families and service to the crown, the 'integrationist ideals' of which 'took little account of local