6 For the historical background see Davies 1987; Stephenson 2019. 7 Sheehan 1963, p. 119. huwpryce bury: attempts to establish a separate Welsh province under an archbishop of St Davids were unsuccessful. The subjection of Welsh bishops to the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury took place against a backdrop of Anglo-Norman, then English, conquest, which began shortly after the Norman conquest of England in the late eleventh century and was initially piecemeal and fluctuating in extent. Wales, then, was a land of plural principalities and lordships and diverse customs – including customs relating to testamentary matters. It was only with King Edward I of England’s war of 1282–3 that the most powerful remaining Welsh principality was finally conquered and its ruler Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, who had earlier gained recognition as Prince of Wales, killed.6 This paper focuses on the transitional period before the canonical will was firmly established throughout Wales in the fourteenth century. It thus aims to illuminate one aspect of a much broader process in which, to quote Sheehan, ‘Throughout Northern Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries important innovations were made in the theory and practice of the legal acts disposing of property at death.’7 More specifically, I want to discuss some aspects of the shift in Wales from the last will as a purely, or at least primarily, oral act to one which, while still often originating in an oral declaration, depended for its validity and execution on its being recorded in writing as part of a probate process in ecclesiastical courts. This will involve assessing the significance of the limited evidence for distinctively Welsh testamentary practices as well as the undoubted influence of English example. It is important to emphasise at the outset that the evidence for the adoption of the canonical will in Wales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a similar manner to England is very thin. This reflects a wider lack of sources. Diocesan statutes including provisions on wills are few, and, whereas numerous English episcopal registers survive from the early thirteenth century, and record the wills of English bishops from the late thirteenth century onwards, Welsh episcopal registers are fragmentary 427
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