Alice DE CLARE

The third (probably) wife of Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd was named "Aliz de Clara" in his charter for Haughmond abbey written at some time while the

bishop of Bangor was Maurice (consecrated in or soon after January 1140, died in August 1162). Una Rees in her edition of the Haughmond cartulary (1985) speculatively placed this charter in 1141/43 "when Cadwaladrwas involved in English affairs". Huw Pryce has more recently (in /TheActs of Welsh Rulers/, 2005) placed the charter in 1140/52 or 1157/61.Sir John Lloyd in his history of Wales had placed it in 1153 and his apparently arbitrary dating has stuck so that others have forced the chronology around it. Lloyd also followed Eyton's guess that Cadwaladr's

wife Aliz was a daughter of Richard fitz Gilbert, while Pryce has proposed that she was actually his widow Adeliza of Chester. Her name was rendered as Adles in late-15th century Welsh genealogical

collections, according to which she was daughter of an earl of Clare ("ferch iarll Klaer"), but we don't have evidence as to which one.

The solution of making the last two into full isters, both of them daughters of Richard fitz Gilbert and his wife Adeliza of Chester, then naming William de Percy's wife "Adelaide" and Cadwaladr's wife "Alice", isjust a guess. These two names became fully distinct after the 12th century. It's not impossible that two legitimate sisters had the same name, or that variants were treated as separate names in the Clare family before this became customary.

(Peter Stewart)

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