Content area
Full text
John Bradley , Cóilín Ó Drisceoil , and Michael Potterton , eds. William Marshal and Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2017. Pp. 352. $50.50 (cloth).
William Marshal and Ireland, a collection of ten essays edited by John Bradley, Cóilín Ó Drisceoil, and Michael Potterton, examines William Marshal's (or the Marshal's) activities in and impact upon Ireland. It arose from a conference commemorating the 800th (or rather, as Bradley's essay informs us and the editors note, the 801st) anniversary of the Marshal's charter to the city of Kilkenny. Such productions can sometimes have a rather jumbled, miscellaneous quality to them, but the clear focus throughout these essays on settlement patterns and on archaeological and architectural evidence make this an unusually coherent volume of conference proceedings. A brief but informative preface that introduces the Marshal and one of the key historical sources for his life—an extended, French biographical poem—helps to situate the reader and adds to the effectiveness of the collection. Several of the essays are rather more historical in approach, while most are primarily archaeological, but they all show an admirable proficiency in working with both types of evidence to give a rounded picture of the Marshal's settlement strategies and the early histories of the towns, castles, manors, and religious houses he founded.
The opening essay by David Crouch examines the wider political framework of the Marshal's career in Ireland and, in so doing, enriches the reader's understanding of each of the other, thematically narrower, contributions. Crouch's analysis highlights the influence and successes of the Marshal's wife, Isabel, through whom his Irish lands...