Welsh Journals

encompassing Breconshire, Radnorshire and parts of Monmouthshire, Herefordshire and Montgomeryshire. In contrast to the Bangor records which have survived only for the period after 1636, the Brecon probates offer a full coverage of testamentary material for almost the whole of the first half of the seventeenth century, together with register copies of wills and other material from the 1570s and 1580s. We thus have a guide to an important source for the social and economic history of early modern Wales and one which was long recognised as such. Much of Theophilus Jones's history of the county of Brecknock benefited from information gleaned in the probate records, Jones, in his capacity as deputy registrar of the archdeaconry, having been in the happy position of being able to exploit those records. Miss Jones's carefully compiled indexes have followed a method whereby the spelling of name entries and place-name references is somewhat rationalised for the sake of clarity. Although there can be pitfalls with such editorial intervention, the method here employed seems cautious and on the whole sensible. Four separate, alphabetically arranged, indexes are provided. Two are applied to the pre-1600 records, roughly coinciding with the register material, and two to the post- 1600 period extending up to 1653. Testators' names for each period are ordered into surname or patronymic lists, or into both according to the clarity of the evidence. That testamentary evidence consists of wills and inventories, and, additionally for the post-1600 period, administration bonds, executors' accounts, administration grants and the like. The extensiveness of these records offers the opportunity to build a fair picture of the habitual life style of the modestly propertied population of south central Wales, those people with goods of a nominal value of up to £ 5. In some cases, even wealthier testators, whose wills were also proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, are included. An indication of the potential for these records can be found in the abstracts published for one area, Radnorshire, prepared through the efforts of the late E. J. L. Cole and published in the Transactions of the Radnorshire Society. The economic status of those involved in these records is a feature worth pursuing. The compiler observes that almost a fifth of the registered wills and a third of the original wills declare some sort of status for the deceased. What is unclear, of course, is the accuracy of the declaration, whether, for example, status is ascribed by the notaries who drew up the wills or whether it is the testators' own self-definition. In a few cases here different testamentary documents establish conflicting social standings. An additional complication arises from the fact that women testators are exclusively defined by their relation to marriage, that is, whether they were widows or spinsters, and not by their economic worth. These qualifications notwithstanding, the picture which emerges is one in which people from the ranks of the yeomen and minor gentry predominated, with a few glimpses of the lower and poorer orders. A significant place was occupied by the Anglican clergy, or at least the benificed and better educated. In addition, the testamentary evidence points to the importance of some of the borderland towns, particularly Brecon itself which, as a service centre, possessed a fairly broad range of trades and crafts and men of some substance.