Welsh Journals

son and heir, perhaps William's senior by as much as a dozen years.7 After Richard Herbert's death, his wife, Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir Matthew Cradock and widow of John Malefant, married for a third time. Her new husband, Sir William Bawdrip, lived at Penmark, some nine miles from Cardiff, and this might account for William's description as 'of Cardiff' in the coroner's inquest, especially as Bawdrip held other estates much nearer the town, at Splott, and even within it.8 Equally, Margaret's dower lands from her marriage to John Malefant mostly lay between Cardiff and Penmark, and William may have been resident at one of these, perhaps at Castle Farm, St George's, five miles from Cardiff, a Malefant manor house of the early fifteenth century.9 Lastly, William's grandfather, Sir Matthew Cradock, was occasionally described as 'of Cardiff' although his main residence was in Gower, so William may have been living in his household or in one of the houses he owned there, as mentioned in his will, or even in Cardiff Castle, the centre of activities of Cradock and then of George Herbert as receivers of Glamorgan.10 Although his family's resources were considerable for Welsh gentry, as the marriage portion of £ 120 made available for his sister Margaret in 1513 and the elaborate tomb erected for his father at Abergavenny suggest, the description of William as a gentleman seems entirely fitting for his circumstances as the younger son of an esquire.11 It is a telling reminder of the degree of his eventual ascent through the social hierarchy, greater than that of any 7 W. R. B. Robinson, 'Sir George Herbert of Swansea (d. 1570)', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies (hereafter BBCS), XXVH, ii (1977), 306-7. 8 L. Toulmin Smith (ed.), The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535-43 (5 vols, London, 1906-8), III, 17; Cardiff Records, I, 409-10; Wiltshire Record Office, Wilton Estate Records, Glamorgan Deeds (WRO 2057), no. 466. 'Glamorgan Record Office, D/D X io 1/1; Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO), E36/158; An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan, Volume III. Medieval Secular Monuments Part II: Non-Defensive (Cardiff, 1982), pp. 159-63. I. M. Traherne, Historical Notices of Sir Matthew Cradock, Knight, of Swansea (Uandovery, 1840), pp. 18-20; G. T. Clark, Cartae et Alia Munimenta quae ad dominium de Glamorgancia pertinent (6 vols, Talygarn, 1910), V, 1778. 11 Clark, Cartae, V, 1780; S. M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century (Derbyshire Record Society, VIII, 1983), pp.'207, 210; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401-1499 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 215; O. Morgan, Some Account of the Ancient Monuments in the Priory Church, Abergavenny (Newport, 1872), pp. 63-8.