The Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1790

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Month: January 2026


Will of the Month: A Yorkshire Widow’s ‘Living Will’

This month’s blog post takes us to Hornsea in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and to the will of a widow named Mary Young, who died in 1786.[1] Mary’s husband, the Reverend James Young, Rector of Catwick, had died in 1768, and the couple had no children. James had made his ‘dear Wife Mary’ the […]


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