Welsh Journals

animals or cash to the marriage partnership, and by deploying their skills and labour in brewing and in dairy work. They spun wool and wove cloth; they kept inns, ran shops and lent money. As married women, supposedly almost invisible as femes coverts before the law, they are named with their husbands in the buying and selling on land. Rich women assisted in estate management; rich widows lived on their own, even buying land on their own account, while poorer widows kept a few animals and survived; an unknown percentile never married at all. A few turned to theft, prostitution and vagabondage. They made and executed wills, bought, sold and leased land; they brought prosecutions for theft and rape, and were prosecuted for infanticide and theft. Most women led hard lives, some led harsh ones; a few lived in what was, for the age, considerable comfort and security. Whatever their wealth, within the confines of custom and law women had active lives, not necessarily restricted to home and farm. Aberystwyth 1 For an extended treatment of Margaret Stedman and other women as reflected in probate documents, see Gerald Morgan, 'Women's Wills in West Wales', Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1993), pp.95-114. 2 P.R.O. PROB/I1/67/326. 3 P.R.O. PROB 11/1547/37. 4 P.R.O. PROB/1 1/141/221. 5 Copied from P.R.O. Dale/60 by Francis Green, Vol.20, p.277. 6 N.L.W. Nanteos Wills. 7 P.R.O. PROB 11/1623/93. 8 See Gerald Morgan, 'Dowries for daughters in West Wales, 1500-1700', Welsh History Review, 17 (1995). 9 NLW Probate SD/1640/42. 10 NLW Probate SD/1637/120. 1 1 The materials for this note are to be found in the very thorough work of Ruth Spalding, The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605-1675, The British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History, New Series XIII, 1990; Contemporaries of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605-1675, ibid., 1990. 12 Ruth Spalding, Diary, p.643. 13 R.F.Isaacson (ed.), Episcopal Registers of St Davids 1397-1518 (London 1917), vol. II, p.699. 14 Lucy E. Lloyd Theakston & John Davies (eds), Some Family Records and Pedigrees of the Lloyds ofAlltyr Odyn. (Oxford, 1912), p.ll. GERALD MORGAN NOTES