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Kingmakers: How Power in England Was Won and Lost on the Welsh Frontier
For a medieval English king, delegation was a necessary evil; and nowhere more necessary – nor more potentially disastrous – than on the Anglo-Welsh borders. The Marcher lords first empowered by William I were relied upon by subsequent Norman and Plantagenet kings to protect the dangerous frontiers of the realm.In Wales, as in Ireland, the smaller size and military weakness of divided neighbouring states encouraged conquest, with the seized lands enhancing the power of the aggressive English lords. They were granted ever greater authority by the monarch, to the point where they believed they ruled like kings. They intermarried, schemed for extra lands and snatched power in a complex and often violent political process. Owing to their resources and unparalleled military effectiveness, they soon came to overawe kings and dominate national events.The strength of the Marcher lords would come to the fore at numerous times in the nation’s history in the shape of notorious figures such as Simon de Montfort and Roger Mortimer. The civil war of King Stephen’s reign, the baronial resistance to King John, the overthrow of Edward II and Richard II; all of these crises turned upon the involvement of the lords of the Marches. Timothy Venning explores their mentality and reveals the dramatic careers both of those who prospered from their loyalty to the king and those whose power was gained by treachery – from the Norman Conquest to the beginnings of the Tudor dynasty.
- GenresBritish Literature
336 pages, Hardcover
Published April 1, 2017
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About the author
Timothy Venning
43 books14 followersDr Timothy Venning is a freelance researcher and author. He studied history at Kings College, London to PhD level, winning the London University History Prize in 1979. He has written articles for the Dictionary of National Biography, as well as a book on Oliver Cromwell and reference works on British office-holders and the chronology of the Byzantine Empire. He also contributes to major biographical publications and his research forms the basis for many other publications.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 30, 2017
The great strength of this book is the forensic detail with which it examines the Marcher lords, the Anglo-Norman barons installed by William the Conqueror to guard his border with Wales. Unfortunately, this is also the book’s great weakness. For those uninitiated into the murderous feuds and labyrinthine family politics of the region, the endless succession of betrayals, murders and double crossings dealt out through generations of bloodshed causes the eyes to glaze over and the head to nod. The author’s extreme reluctance to use paragraphs – their average length is four pages – also does not help to bring into focus this parade of feuding barons and fratricidal Welsh princes.
To deal with the author’s virtues first, we must note and commend his command of the source material. Only someone completely at home with the history of the Marcher lords could negotiate the extraordinarily complicated family feuds and rivalries that drove much of the politics of the region. Timothy Venning clearly has no difficulty in remembering that, for instance, Gerald of Windsor’s wife, Nest, was the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdr and mistress to Henry II, and together they produced Maurice FitzGerald, who would go on to found the Fitzgerald dynasty in Ireland, another son who produced the Carew family via his lordship of Caer Yw Castle, and a daughter who was the mother of the historian Gerald of Wales. Indeed, such is Venning’s command of the intricacies of family relationships that this reviewer thinks it a shame he did not live then: he would have understood perfectly the extraordinarily complicated knots of relationships that drove the history of the Marches and, later, Ireland. For the reader who takes similar delight in learning the dynastic details of the time, this book will be perfect. This reviewer knows of nothing to match its attention to familial detail.
But this is also the book’s great fault. The mark of a great historian is the mastery of detail combined with the gift of knowing what detail to include and what to exclude. There is no doubting Venning’s mastery of the detail, but very little of that detail is excluded from the story, meaning that the general reader is likely to be quickly overwhelmed by the succession of names. Venning’s thesis is that the Marcher lords played a major part in the power politics of medieval England and he certainly makes that case, but he could have done so just as well by focusing more closely on the more significant interventions in the monarchy by these lords, rather than seeking to cram in to his book pretty well every battle and plot between the Conquest and the accession of Richard III, when the book ends, sputtering out in the heavy rain that drowned the revolt of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham.
That the book should end thus, with a final addition of detail rather than a rounded summing up of what has gone before, rather tells its own story: it’s a book of pieces stuck into history, but with too little narrative drive to push the general reader through to its conclusion.
To deal with the author’s virtues first, we must note and commend his command of the source material. Only someone completely at home with the history of the Marcher lords could negotiate the extraordinarily complicated family feuds and rivalries that drove much of the politics of the region. Timothy Venning clearly has no difficulty in remembering that, for instance, Gerald of Windsor’s wife, Nest, was the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdr and mistress to Henry II, and together they produced Maurice FitzGerald, who would go on to found the Fitzgerald dynasty in Ireland, another son who produced the Carew family via his lordship of Caer Yw Castle, and a daughter who was the mother of the historian Gerald of Wales. Indeed, such is Venning’s command of the intricacies of family relationships that this reviewer thinks it a shame he did not live then: he would have understood perfectly the extraordinarily complicated knots of relationships that drove the history of the Marches and, later, Ireland. For the reader who takes similar delight in learning the dynastic details of the time, this book will be perfect. This reviewer knows of nothing to match its attention to familial detail.
But this is also the book’s great fault. The mark of a great historian is the mastery of detail combined with the gift of knowing what detail to include and what to exclude. There is no doubting Venning’s mastery of the detail, but very little of that detail is excluded from the story, meaning that the general reader is likely to be quickly overwhelmed by the succession of names. Venning’s thesis is that the Marcher lords played a major part in the power politics of medieval England and he certainly makes that case, but he could have done so just as well by focusing more closely on the more significant interventions in the monarchy by these lords, rather than seeking to cram in to his book pretty well every battle and plot between the Conquest and the accession of Richard III, when the book ends, sputtering out in the heavy rain that drowned the revolt of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham.
That the book should end thus, with a final addition of detail rather than a rounded summing up of what has gone before, rather tells its own story: it’s a book of pieces stuck into history, but with too little narrative drive to push the general reader through to its conclusion.
March 13, 2017
3.5* - Full review can be found on my blog: https://wheretheresinktherespaper.wor...
November 1, 2022
hands down the worst history book I've ever read (or tried to read). I only made it to page 70 before giving up. The run-on sentences are excruciating not to mention that I had found 7 misspellings and couldn't even begin to count the grammatical errors. Here's a sample of one of the shorter sentences "Gruffydd meanwhile lent support to the major Welsh rebellion against the Anglo-Norman settlers in Deheubarth in 1136 after Henry I died, his daughter Gwenllian having eloped with their leader Gruffydd ap Rhys (who Gruffydd had earlier given sanctuary in Gwynedd but tried to hand over to Henry I) some time around 1113-15; the latter was seeking his father-in-law's aid in 1136 when Gwenllian was killed attacking the settlers at Kidwelly/Cydweli Castle."
Imagine page after page of that. I literally got a headache. DO NO BUY THIS BOOK!!
Imagine page after page of that. I literally got a headache. DO NO BUY THIS BOOK!!
March 29, 2021
This book is dense! It took me 50 pages to get into it, at which point I stopped trying to take in all the massive genealogical information, and just enjoyed a real sense of the history of the Marches, and indeed Britain from the Norman Conquest to the 1400s. Because of the format, there is a fair amount of repetition, and the author also has a tendency to write paragraphs of several pages length, but these are mere quibbles. This is a good book!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews