Cylchgronau Cymru

scrupulous a scholar to extend to the faltering amateur the treacherous illumination of easy, unqualified generalizations which would have disguised the true complexity of his theme. That he could write with impressive clarity is at once apparent to readers of his contribution to Chambers's Encyclopaedia: the Hartwell Jones lecture is a model of its kind. Especially impressive was his exceedingly skilful use of post-conquest sources-ministers' accounts, rent rolls, extents, law books-to analyse the social structure of earlier centuries and notably the economic and social changes of the thirteenth century. Unlike T. P. Ellis, whose services he freely acknowledged, he stressed the fact that society was evolutionary rather than static. Although he was not the first to perceive that the various strands woven into the body of Welsh native law, when disentangled and critically examined, reveal a progressive development, yet no one insisted as much as he that the legal practice of the period 1180-1280 cannot be properly understood without a systematic evaluation of material incorporated in the fourteenth and fifteenth century law books. It was most fitting that the Board of Celtic Studies should last year have awarded him the Hywel Dda Prize. Nor has anyone so thoroughly appreciated the nature of late-medieval agrarian changes which ushered in the modern age. The week before his death he was busily engaged upon the final draft of a chapter on Welsh agrarian tendencies, 1400-1600, to be included in Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. IV, 1500-1640, shortly to appear under the editorship of Dr. Joan Thirsk. He had also delivered papers to European learned societies and he always rightly held that Welsh history should not be studied in isolation. Jones Pierce transformed our view of important sections of Welsh medieval society and cast a bright light upon unfrequented paths along which others may safely follow. He will be remembered by his Aberystwyth pupils as an inspiring teacher and he conveyed to his postgraduate students, with whom he formed close bonds, an awareness that research was not simply a formal enquiry but an exciting enterprise. His talents as public speaker are well known. He had, in the course of time, developed a dramatic style of lecturing particularly effective when dealing with the final collapse of Gwynedd and the last days of Llywelyn ein Llyw Olaf. At his most characteristic he was undoubtedly unique. His lectures in the open air, at the site of a Cistercian house or of a Welsh castle, were unforgettable- his eye for terrain, the rotund phrase, the majestic gesture, the infectious enthusiasm, the fluent mastery all combined to create a remarkable impression upon the listener. One of his last lectures, as President of the Cambrians, was delivered without notes, an indication both of the intensive preparation which preceded public utterance and of an unrivalled intimacy with his subject. It is indeed hard to accept that we shall not again hear his softly sonorous voice speak to us of priodawr and of maerdref, of cyfran and of gafael.