An interesting and useful volume which offers a substantial amount of historical flesh to clothe the archaeological bones for this intriguing period of Cornwall's history."

Chapter 11 provides a fascinating account of commercial connectivity. Detailed study of both the tin trade and of debt patterns reveals the strength of Cornwall’s economic ties with London. The capital was especially important as a hub for Cornish goods and trade but Drake also takes care to illuminate commercial connectivity with other regions of England. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that ‘… the many interlinked strands of commercial connectivity, from networks of exchange and social interaction through to political considerations arising from trade, helped Cornwall cohere with the rest of England’ (p. 234). The following three chapters range in turn across the law, the church, and the sea. Despite the numerous customary courts which perforated the legal landscape of the region, Cornwall’s integration into the royal common law system encouraged ‘legal connectivity’ and Drake shows how many Cornishmen made careers out of legal expertise. These included no lesser personage than Robert Tresilian, who rose to become Chief Justice of the King’s Bench and whose loyalty to Richard II saw him executed in 1388. Chapter 13 surveys the county’s ecclesiastical institutions and points to the significant numbers of Cornishmen who left the county to pursue higher education (usually at Oxford), before becoming integrated into the Church both in and beyond Cornwall. The Church therefore acted as a bonding agent between Cornwall and the wider realm, in much the same way as the common law, the king’s armies, and the lordship of the earl-dukes. Chapter 14 comprising in an innovative discussion of maritime connection which ranges across trade connections with English ports, Wales, Ireland, Bordeaux and Brittany, and considers Cornish involvement in smuggling and the famously Cornish pastime of piracy (both as victims and perpetrators). Altogether, ‘The sea formed a most remarkable medium of interchange’ (p. 302). The looming issue of ‘Cornish identity’ forms the subject of chapter three. (3) This chapter is framed by the debate over the ‘county community’ noted above, in particular Christine Carpenter’s oft-quoted suggestion that ‘There is now a strong case for banning the word "community" from all academic writing and an even stronger one for banning it from the vocabulary of politics’. (4) On the basis of a wide-ranging discussion that takes in the structure of county administration, the language of petitions written on behalf of the county’s inhabitants, shared spaces of collective action such as the county court, the legend of King Arthur, and the Cornish language, Drake argues ‘Leaving “community” for small groups, we should cautiously favour the term “commonalty” for the more expansive form of collective interactions represented by the county, a term that contemporaries often employed’ (p. 43). This county “commonalty” is then—necessarily—situated within both narrower and wider solidarities (links between Cornwall and Devon, for example, or between maritime regions) that formed part of the polyvalent and shifting patchwork of identities adopted by the people of Cornwall at different times and in different situations. Drake is careful to qualify his suggestion for the use of the word “commonalty” to describe the collective interests of the county. Certainly, in using this word historians will have to take great care (as Drake himself has done) not simply to import the word “commonalty” while resurrecting the concept of the older discredited model of county “community” that drew criticism from Carpenter in the first place. Chapter four continues to explore how the people of Cornwall thought of themselves and how the people of Cornwall were considered by others. This takes in travel and travellers, the meaning of the very words ‘Cornwall’ and ‘Cornish’, local customs, and further research on language and mythology. The use of comparative material is particularly enlightening here: the point is well made, for instance, that the law did not enforce an ethnic divide between a ‘native’ population and the English, as did the legal frameworks of Ireland and Wales. In both chapters three and four, Drake repeatedly hammers home his theme of connectivity. While Cornwall certainly existed as a distinct entity in the hearts and minds of its residents and played host to many distinctive customs and practices, ‘notions of Cornishness were defined in no small part through the county’s interactions with the rest of England, by Cornwall’s Englishness’ (p. 107). Appendix II. Cornish Men-at-Arms and Mounted Archers who Served the King between c. 1298 and c. 1415 Cornwall was not, of course, that mythical construct the ‘typical’ English county. As Drake makes clear in the opening section, the history of medieval Cornwall cannot be divorced from more recent debates about the county’s ‘exceptional’ nature, which in its most extreme form leads to the argument that Cornwall should be separated from England altogether. It is very much the nature and extent of the ties binding Cornwall and its inhabitants with each other and with the wider realm that forms the subject of this book. After noting the historiographical contradictions at the heart of our understanding of Cornwall’s history, Drake sets out the dynamic he wishes to pursue: ‘The main aim of this book, therefore, is to present an account of how fourteenth-century Cornwall cohered with the rest of the kingdom while remaining a quite remarkable place’ (p. xix). Drake’s Cornwall was both strongly connected to England and a very distinctive place with its own traditions, language, and idiosyncrasies. The rest of the book illuminates how these things can both be true at once. A word also ought to be said about Dr Raven’s kind comment that ‘ Cornwall, Connectivity and Identity shows how interesting and important the model of the county study can still be’. It is true that county studies have been out of vogue for some time now, being eschewed in favour of social network theory or completely abandoned. Yet there is still merit in county studies – and the genre does have a future – for the simple reason that there was a great deal of activity going on at the shire level that is both well documented and well worth investigating. The truism also bears repeating that to understand the wider history of the realm it is essential to appreciate the diversity of its constituent parts. The structures of the county had a key role to play here, with shires serving as a units of collective government and grievance that bound their inhabitants both to each other and into the kingdom at large. While county sentiment was by means perfectly defined or definable, it should be placed in a whole hierarchy of solidarities ranging from sub-county localism through to larger regionalism and regnal solidarity itself. All these overlapping sentiments served to determine the intertwined political dynamics of both the localities and the kingdom. Perhaps, though, it is the nature of the questions asked of the ‘county’ that really determines the value of this avenue of investigation. Although I explored at length the forces that bound the residents of Cornwall together, in a sense I sought to turn the traditional county study on its head by placing connectivity and Cornwall’s place in a wider world at the very centre of my book. I tried to ask very big questions about the Cornish peninsula in particular and about the role of the county in later medieval life more generally.operated (I briefly consulted G. R. Lewis’ 1908 The Stannaries, a Study of the Medieval Tin Miners of Cornwall and Devon, cited in the In considering all these subjects I sought to show that Cornwall was strikingly distinctive, but that at the same time it was a place powerfully connected to a wider world. Indeed, it was the combination of these twin aspects of the peninsula – as both distinctive and connected – that made late medieval Cornwall what it was: a quite remarkable place.

Overall, this is an interesting and useful volume which offers a substantial amount of historical flesh to clothe the archaeological bones for this intriguing period of Cornwall's history." Stretching out into the wild Atlantic, fourteenth-century Cornwall was a land at the very ends of the earth. Within itsboundaries many believed that King Arthur was a real-life historical Cornishman and that their natal shire had once been the home of mighty giants. Yet, if the county was both unusual and remarkable, it still held an integral place in the wider realm of England. Drawing on a wide range of published and archival material, this book seeks to show how Cornwall remained strikingly distinctive while still forming part of the kingdom. It argues that myths,saints, government, and lordship all endowed the name and notion of Cornwall with authority in the minds of its inhabitants, forging these people into a commonalty. At the same time, the earldom-duchy and the Crown together helped to link the county into the politics of England at large. With thousands of Cornishmen and women drawn east of the Tamar by the needs of the Crown, warfare, lordship, commerce, the law, the Church, and maritime interests, connectivity with the wider realm emerges as a potent integrative force.

Dr Sam J. Drake's Cornwall, Connectivity and Identity in the Fourteenth Century is a most notable contribution [...] Drake offers a wide-ranging and richly researched portrait of life in fourteenth-century Cornwall which takes 'connectivity' as its theme. This allows Drake to make a scholarly contribution of great value not only for those primarily interested in Cornish history but also for those who work on the more general social and political history of England in the late middle ages: put simply, this is a book that will need to be added to a great many reading lists."