This month’s post explores the 1725 will of Mary Skelton, a widow of East Greenwich who appeared to have clear ‘favourites’ within her family and divided up her assets accordingly.[1] It’s a document that shows how wills were both deeply reflective of, and sometime the drivers of, familial conflicts. Mary’s scrupulous approach to dividing up […]
Jane Whittle, Wills Project Principal Investigator The wills project has now successfully transcribed more than 30,000 early modern wills from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, with at least 5000 from each of the sample periods evenly spaced between the 1540s and the 1780s. We also have a prototype database that allows us to search by […]