huwpryce 425 etween1289 and 1550 almost 650 wills survive from Wales. This paper focuses on the background to this by assessing evidence from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for testamentary disposition in medieval Wales. This evidence is sparse but nevertheless suggestive. One theme explored is the evidence for oral deathbed bequests in the Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd (d. 1137) and the texts of native Welsh law. The former source is particularly interesting, as it describes the king’s bequests in some detail and emphasises the role of family members and others as witnesses to them. In addition, the account of the bequests may indicate that they were recorded in writing before being incorporated in the Life. However, if these sources point to distinctive Welsh testamentary practices, these practices were paralleled in neighbouring England and Ireland. Overall, moreover, the paper concludes that the balance of evidence, including scattered references in ecclesiastical narrative and record sources, indicates the adoption in Wales of the Romano-canonical will as developed in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England, with which Wales was brought into close contact in this period through conquest and the subordination of its four episcopal sees in the province of Canterbury. The final part of the paper examines will-making by Welsh bishops. Here, practice varied regionally. Particular attention is given to the attempts of the princes of Gwynedd in north Wales to exercise the ius spolii by preventing bishops from making wills and seizing their personal goods on their death. This changed after Edward I’s conquest of Wales in 1282–4, when royal permission was given for bishops in north Wales to make wills. The paper concludes by analysing aspects of the diplomatic of the earliest surviving written will by a Welsh testator, namely that of Anian II, Bishop of St Asaph in 1289, based on the copy surviving in the archives of the cathedral church of Canterbury. B Abstract
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=