ABSTRACT
Widowhood can be said to comprise two component parts: the event - the loss of a partner - and the construct - the deployment of the rhetoric of widowhood. This chapter is concerned with a situation in which the hiatus between these elements is more than usually evident. Widowed men and women who remained single could require such intervention to secure the disposal of their property as they wished, especially if the men lacked sons. Widows have to be prised out of the documentary record; the process is as labour-intensive as identifying widowers in other periods. The widow is herself linguistically associated with the legacy. The Latin terminology of widowhood turns up even more rarely. If widows occupy such a secure place in the written remains of pre-Conquest England, the question naturally arises of why this was not more obvious.
