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liberty early in Mary's reign. Ferrar paid dearly for his beliefs and died bravely for them, although a number of subsequent authors, suspicious of Foxe's puritan sympathies, have been less that just in their estimate of Ferrar. This volume, while tending to be over-detailed in its lengthy quotations, and rather less than neutral in its approach, provides valuable additional material to our knowledge of the Reformation, especially in the diocese of St David's. GLANMOR WILLIAMS Swansea Monmouthshire Wills PROVED IN THE PREROGATIVE COURT OF Canter- BURY, 1560-1601. Edited and calendared by Judith Jones. South Wales Record Society, Cardiff, 1997. Pp. viii, 256. £ 24.00. This is a highly creditable and welcome piece of work which enhances the body of primary material in print available to the historian of Elizabethan Wales. In addition, Mrs Jones's introductory essay offers a sound analysis of several espects of Monmouthshire life as they emerge in the wills. Some of the wills-154 in total-and their testators will already be familiar to readers through the labours of Sir Joseph Bradney, whose immense volumes on the history of Monmouthshire remain a treasury of important material for this period. Mrs Jones helpfully draws our attention to the relevant pages in Bradney's works but she adds a great deal of new material, particularly relating to lesser gentry and the better-off among the tradespeople and yeomanry of the county. Being PCC wills, of course, they deal with a more affluent and propertied element in the county than those whose wills were proved in the local consistory courts. Welsh consistory court records at the National Library are now quite fully catalogued and it would be no bad thing for local history studies such as this to begin to exploit that rich vein. As it is, Mrs Jones's volume adds to the quantity of published PCC material relating to Wales, the best of which hitherto has been that which appeared over many years in the Transactions of the Radnorshire Society. The introductory essay tackles several aspects of Monmouthshire life as depicted, or hinted at, in the wills. Quite a bit of the discussion is devoted to the individual circumstances of the testators and their relatives. It is interesting, for example, to note the author's assertion that there were signs in some wills of the survival of gavelkind in the provision made for younger sons; the care of children also received considerable attention, at least in