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Professor Dafydd Jenkins, legal historian and the doyen of medieval Welsh law, died in the early hours of Sunday 6 May at the age of 101. Born on 1 March 1911, he lived long enough to have had at least four careers. He was born in London to Cardiganshire parents, attended Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences followed by Law, and was called to the Bar in 1934. He then worked as a barrister in Carmarthen and in 1938 was secretary of the campaign to have the Welsh language recognised in Court. A conscientious objector during the war, he bought a farm at Trawsnant in Ceredigion and farmed that in the forties and fifties, a farm he still owned at his death. He was influential in Welsh agricultural circles and was instrumental in establishing farming co-operatives in Wales. In the forties and fifties he conducted evening classes on agricultural topics for the Extra-Mural Department of the University of Wales College, Aberystwyth, and from 1965 lectured in the Law Department at Aberystwyth, eventually holding a chair in Legal History and Welsh Law, (1975–1978), until his retirement.
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