Therefore, Ward had to go to more personal accounts to further fill in the gaps in the record with respect to women, their roles, and their characters as expressed in those roles. "Royal and legal records" (5) are such depositories of information also consulted by Ward, but they, too, give essentially a general overview of women's roles, and, once again, they yield only portraits of limited traditional roles for women which were seen as legitimate and acceptable in that era. In addition, then, Ward makes ample use of more personal records such as household accounts, wills and letters.

In her effort to describe and understand the various roles played by women in the later Middle Ages, Ward examines these records for information on such areas as marriage, land ownership by widows of the noble class, the household, lifestyle and travel, children, kinsmen and friends, estates and revenue, lordship and patronage, and religious practice. In order to give her examination a stronger thread of coherence and continuity, the author use

the emphasis is still seen to rest on the family, but the importance of land and lordship is substantiated, and it is possible to obtain more information [from the combination of chronicles and legal and royal records] on the lower ranks of the nobility (5).

the return of those lands to Elizabeth.

As David Bates, the General Editor of the series of books of which Ward's is a part, writes, Ward had made a successful and significant "start . . . in portraying the lives of women . . . in the upper strata of lay society" (back cover) in the later Middle Ages. Her work is thoroughly documented, from public and private records, and is greatly relevant to any study of the period or of women's history. She is cautious in presenting her conclusions, avoiding claims which are unsubstantiated by the evidence, but never afraid to make suggestions drawn from that evidence, suggestions which can serve future researchers.

s the character of Elizabeth de Burgh, a wealthy noblewoman and widow in England in the fourteenth century, throughout the book as a "continuing case-study . . . to place the various 'life-roles' of her kind and class in a specific context" (back cover).

Despite the prevalence of arranged marriages, the sources reveal that some women were independent enough to make their own decision in this area:

In "The Widow and Her Lands," we read that Elizabeth de Burgh was a particularly willful woman who refused to buckle under the pressures of the patriarchal system. As the Calendar of Patent Rolls show