J. GORONWY EDWARDS. Edward I's Castle-Building in Wales. (Proceedings of the British Academy. Volume XXXII. Pp. 8i. 5s.) During the building 'season' (April-November) of I277 Edward I began the construction of castles at Builth, Aberystwyth, Rhuddlan and Flint; in i283 work was commenced on an even larger scale at Conway, Carnarvon and Harlech and, in I295, at Beaumaris. This group of castles has long stimulated the interest of scholars other than archaeologists and military historians, and it is the building accounts, drawn up during the period of their construction, which have especially attracted attention. This material has been most recently and most impressively used by Professor Edwards. His object was to reveal that phase in the history of castles which 'is usually obscure....that fundamental part... when they were in the builders' hands'. He does so by extracting from the evidence four essential pieces of information: the time spent in building each of these eight castles; the size of the labour force employed; the cost; the financing of the enterprise. The main type of evidence consists of enrolled accounts. These are necessarily a consolidation of items which we should like to possess in detail. Sometimes those details have survived in rotuli de particulis, and it is these precious documents which Professor Edwards has laid under heavy contribution. Such evidence is not easily interpreted, and the author scrupulously sets out its limitations; but as a result of his expert analysis it is seen to embody clear and valuable information on the four topics selected for discussion. For example, there is a statement of 'particulars' which records, week by week from 30 December i 285 until I4 September i286, the numbers of workmen employed at Harlech and the rates of wages paid to them. This unusually complete set of data is ingeniously and convincingly used by the author as a conversion table to calculate the average weekly number of workmen employed at other castles where the only recorded facts are those normally given in the enrolled accounts: the total sum paid out in wages during a given length of time. These calculations, on which the author's conclusions regarding the size of the labour force employed are principally based, are explained and given detailed demonstration in an appendix. The reasonable accuracy of the results is in one important instance corroborated by independent evidence. The author's major achievement among many is to bring the subject away from the realms of archaeology and military history and to place it firmly in a milieu to which it also belongs-in that of the history of government. He reveals the process of castle-building as 'a medieval state-enterprise'. It is not only in our own day that the provision of the largest and most intricate pieces of military equipment has strained the state's resources of finance and labour. The Middle Ages knew problems comparable in character, even if simpler and smaller in scale. The author shows that during the quarter of a century down to -I30i,when Wales passed as a principality to his son, Edward spent no less than ?8o,ooo on these buildings, and during some seasons employed as many as 4,000 workmen. Many of these were skilled men-masons, quarriers, carpenters and smiths-who (like the necessary finances) were not available from within Wales itself, and who were impressed not only from the western English shires, but from those as distant as Yorkshire, Lincoln and Cambridgeshire. The fact bears out Professor Edwards' comment that the recruiting of such a force 'might not be a negligible draught upon the total available pool of mobile labour', just as the financial crisis of i296 'was largely the slow product