1922 SHORT NOTICES 315 anticipation (in 1457) of the -monies pietatis (1463) of the Franciscans in Italy. None is to borrow more than twenty shillings for one half-year, and the pledge of gold, silver, tin, lead, brass, pewter, or iron is to be worth three shillings and fourpence more than the loan. The first and second ordinances of the Lichfield Tailors (1576 and 1697) and Smiths (1601 and 1630) are primarily and mainly concerned with restrictions on the entrance of members not apprenticed in the town and upon the work or trade of strangers. The Smiths were an ' ancient society ' comprising smiths, goldsmiths, ironmongers 5 cordmakers, pewterers, plumbers, cutlers, and spurrers ; and no member apprenticed to any of these callings is to practise one of the others. G. U. The Calendar of Deeds and Documents, vol. i, The Coleman Deeds (Aberystwyth : National Library of Wales, 1921), compiled by Mr. Francis Green, gives a resume of some fifteen hundred documents, once the property of the late Mr. James Coleman, but now preserved in the National Library. Practically all these documents relate to Wales (every county being represented) and Monmouthshire. The great bulk of them are deeds of various kinds drawn up in connexion with the transfer of land, but in- cluded in the collection are also a fair number of wills and other miscellanea. All are of relatively modern date : a few are earlier than 1550, but the majority fall between that date and the middle of the nineteenth century, those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries being the most numerous. The documents are calendared, with a few exceptions, county by county and in chronological order, and apart from occasional slips in the spelling of place-names slips that can scarcely be entirely eliminated, and in any case are not seriously misleading (e. g. no. 1192, Boiler for Bolles, and no. 1259, &c., Mertin-ysglaw for Mertin-ysghw) the work seems to have been carefully done. The volume contains material of considerable interest to the student of Welsh history. Especially valuable is the great amount of topographical information, such as names of vills, fields, houses, roads, and lanes, profusely scattered through the leases and similar deeds. The primary value of these data, of course, will be to the student of the rela- tively modern period to which the documents belong, but they are not without interest even to one whose bent is more towards things medieval. To take an example : one of the most difficult problems of Welsh history is the problem of medieval Welsh boundaries, especially in the Marches. The solution of the problem, so far as a solution can be hoped for, will probably be reached only by carefully collating all the available topo- graphical data, and it will often be necessary to supplement the strictly medieval evidence with later evidence such as is made accessible in the present Calendar. The defect of the Calendar as it now stands is the lack of an index. The omission is explained in a prefatory note, which promises ' a full index to the contents of this and other volumes as part of the project '. One hopes that the ' other volumes ' will be numerous, and therefore that the ' full index ' (it can scarcely be too full) will not be the last part of the project to be achieved : for while such volumes as this are without an index, their practical utility is gravely diminished. J. G. E.
