We now travel west to examine the depiction of livery collars on church monuments in Wales, to provide both a comparison and a contrast to the study of Derbyshire. The aims are the same: to identify the motivations behind a group of individuals and their families choosing to depict livery collars on their church monuments, and to elucidate the links between them. Were the same motivations identified in Derbyshire, in particular ties of kinship and geography, present among other clusters of individuals who were depicted with livery collars on their memorials? Were there additional factors specific to the Wales network? The context is again a geographical area, principally the south of Wales, a region which provided the core of the affinity of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (d. 1469), during the 1460s. However, a supplementary theme is addressed in the form of an event – the battle of Edgecote in 1469, at which a significant proportion of Herbert's affinity were killed fighting for Edward IV. Did this catastrophic event for the house of York provide an additional stimulus for choosing to depict a livery collar on a memorial? The focus here is on the collar both as a political statement and as an affirmation of kinship and geographical ties. With this group political conviction, hitherto the conventional meaning attributed to the livery collar by historians, was indeed a salient motivation when it came to making the decision whether to depict the artefact on one's tomb.

Though the English gentry may have amused themselves at Welsh patronymics and their obsession with ‘old pedegris’, the Welsh played an integral part in the Wars of the Roses. The contributions of Jasper Tudor, uncle to Henry VII and a constant thorn in the Yorkists’ side, and Sir Rhys ap Thomas, whose contingent proved vital to Henry in 1485, have been acknowledged by historians. Up to the accession of Edward IV in 1461, Yorkist military strength was drawn primarily from the Welsh Marches, the duke of York's Mortimer estates providing fertile recruiting territory. It was their Mortimer lineage which drew the people of the Marches to York and his son, the earl of March, and it was Marcher men who triumphed at the battle of Mortimer's Cross in February 1461, paving the way for the earl's proclamation as king in London.