The growth of law in medieval Wales, c. 1100–c. 1500 by Sara Elin Roberts (review)

Reviewed by: The growth of law in medieval Wales, c. 1100–c. 1500 by Sara Elin Roberts Paul Russell (bio) Sara Elin Roberts, The growth of law in medieval Wales, c. 1100–c. 1500. Woodbridge: Boy-dell, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-78327-726-1. Pp. xxi + 244. 125 (cloth). This is the first volume for some time where a single author sets out the (and their) current thinking about the textual background of medieval Welsh law; as such, it bears comparison with works such as Jenkins 1970 or Charles-Edwards 1989. While the core of the volume is a 'new approach to Cyfraith Hywel', which is set out in the second part of the work, the first part provides an excellent discussion of where we are in the study of medieval Welsh law on a number of important issues. The volume is timely in several ways, not least because our understanding of Welsh manuscripts has been immeasurably improved by the publication of Daniel Huws' Repertory of Welsh manuscripts and scribes (2022), even though by an accident of the timing of publication the precise pagination was not available when the current volume went to press. That said, the author has been able to make good use of Huws in other ways. Much recent activity on medieval Welsh law has focused on the detailed textual work needed to make sense of the texts and their interrelationships, and it is one of the great merits of this book that it, for the most part, steps back from the texts to look at the bigger picture. Furthermore, as the title indicates with its stated date range of 1100–1500, it is interested less about where the law has come from but more about where it went and how it developed. Part I, 'Reading the law, shaping the law' (1–100), presents an excellent discussion of the current state of play. Chapter 1 (1–21), which introduces the texts, is set alongside chapter 2 (23–48), a very useful overview of the scholarship which sets the End Page 114 important works of the past in their proper context. Chapter 3 (49–86) then turns to an important and interesting topic, the role of judges and lawyers in the development of the law through their interventions and reinterpretations; the appendix to this chapter (87–100) helpfully gathers examples from Llyfr Iorwerth where the texts register differences of legal opinion, marking an alternative view with rei a dyweit 'some say'. 1 The most important element of the 'new approach' presented in Part II (101–211) is its proper insistence on paying equal attention to the texts which have become known as the 'Anomalous laws', the law texts and forms of law which did not fit into the canonical format of Llyfr Iorwerth, Llyfr Cyfnerth, and Llyfr Blegywryd, notably texts with the heading of cynghawsedd, damweiniau, and holiadon. They are the subject of chapter 4 (103–131) ; though much work has been done on these texts over the years, it is still the case that they are hardly the first texts which spring to mind when medieval Welsh law is being discussed. The author's conclusion is important: 'the material is united by its usefulness, its application for a working lawyer and, as such, it may represent living law' (131). The discussion then turns in chapter 5 (133–159) to a particularly problematic area in the textual study of Welsh law, namely the so-called 'tails' in the Blegywryd redaction: it has long been recognised that the main text of this redaction was translated from Latin, but, to a varying degree, most of the manuscripts of the redaction have extra text added on the end, often from other redactions. The argument is made here that much (but probably not all) of this material should be regarded as forming the last third of the text, arferion cyfraith 'the practices (or usages) of the law', that is, how the law should be put into effect. Chapters 5 and 6 then move on to explore the implications of these arguments for our understanding of the arrangement, structure and contents of individual manuscripts. Chapter 6 (161–186) is concerned with manuscripts that. . .