Welsh Journals

BOOK REVIEWS THE NORMANS IN SOUTH WALES, 1070-1171, by Lynn. H. Nelson. Austin (U.S.A.) and London (University of Texas Press), 1966. pp. xii + 217. 43f. The author of this sketch of the Norman settlements in South Wales has a purpose, for his concern is to apply to the Welsh marches the "frontier thesis" of the American historian, F. J. Turner. I have reservations about Mr. Nelson's historical analysis. Conjectures are, within a few pages, hardened into facts, especially in his treatment of border society and of the early growth of the lordships of Brecknock and Glamorgan. He discusses Domesday society without reference to Reginald Lennard and he writes about the church in Wales without reference to Dr. J. Conway Davies. To cite one point of detail, he repeats long-standing confusions about the lineage of Robert fitz Hamo, conqueror of Glamorgan (whom he insists on calling earl of Gloucester), by relying on older writers and ignoring author- itative discussions of the problem by D. C. Douglas and L. C. Loyd. But what of his thesis ? Turner, studying the western frontiers of the U.S.A. identified certain frontier conditions a wider freedom from political controls, new and rich opportunities, a heightened sense of the importance of the individual and the family, and eventually a stimulus towards democracy. When frontier conditions disappeared, a new element had been injected into the life of the nation. Some of these features Mr. Nelson sees on the Welsh frontier in the twelfth century. So, he claims, "the concentration of power in the hands of the marcher lord, and his independence of royal authority, provided the frontiersmen an immediate and responsive govern- ment, and the possibility of individual freedom and power which such a government brought". He recognises that it was not the family but the feudal lord who drew strength from "frontier conditions". He explains certain classes of English agrarian society as products of the frontier, and he has much of interest to say about the distinction between Norman lowland and Welsh upland areas. This is, then, a serious attempt to see how Turner's views must be modified for a different frontier and a different age. Yet I wonder whether, in these terms, the thesis is as valuable an aid to under- standing the Welsh marches as it might be ? Mr. Nelson treats the history of the borders as if there were little, if any, room for discussion, where I would prefer to see his thesis used as a means of reopening discussion. He defines the powers of a marcher lord with a precision which few historians would care to suggest. When, for example, he asserts that in the twelfth century each marcher lord had his own "parliament," he can scarcely be using the word in its accepted sense. Or again, the supersession of the "clas" church is noticed as an accomplished fact, and the Norman church is dismissed as merely "a tool of domination". The church "found it impossible to adapt freely to its immediate environment." Well, perhaps these are commonplaces of Welsh medieval history. Yet the story of the