Will of the Month: A widow of Greenwich and her ‘undutifull’ Son

Posted by e.m.vine@exeter.ac.uk

27 May 2026

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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 her possessions was reflected in her careful and cautious plans for her funeral, which were set out at the beginning of her will. Regarding her body, she wanted to be ‘decently buryed’ but ‘not untill eight dayes att least after my Death’. This request for a delayed burial may have been influenced by a (relatively early) fear of either body-snatching or being buried alive: this latter concern gained much more widespread cultural traction later in the eighteenth century, and particularly after the publication of the English edition of The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death, and the Danger of Precipitate Interments and Dissections, Demonstrated (1746). Meanwhile early cases of body-snatching, the removal of recently buried, un-decomposed bodies from graveyards for medical dissection, were being reported in London in the 1710s and 1720s, and may have fuelled Mary’s concerns.[2]

‘Two East India Companys bonds’

Regarding her ‘Worldly Estate’, Mary left significant bequests to her granddaughter, also Mary Skelton, the daughter of favoured son Abraham. Abraham was named executor of the will, and would inherit four dwelling houses with ‘their outhouses Yards Gardens’ on London Street in East Greenwich, as well as the residue of his mother’s real and personal estate. Granddaughter Mary was still a child when the will was made: she would receive ‘two hundred pounds to be paid to her att her age of one and Twenty Years or day of Marriage first happening’. In the intervening years, the interest from this £200 would be laid out ‘from time to time’ to pay for her clothes. To secure the £200, and to ensure that ‘the same may not be Embezled’, Mary asked that her executors deliver ‘Two East India Companys bonds’, worth £200 in total, to ‘some Substantiall honest person’. East India Company bonds were considered a reliable financial device in the eighteenth century.[3] Skelton may have been drawn to this investment because of Greenwich’s links to global trade, and her personal connections with those who worked in local maritime industries.

‘one Silver Pepper Box marked MS’

As well as this substantial sum of money, (£200 would be worth approximately £32,000-£36,000 today[4]), Mary left the same granddaughter several of her personal and household possessions. These included ‘two Small Silver Salvers and one Silver Pepper Box marked MS’ (it was perhaps fitting that they shared a name and initials) as well as ‘One Silver Mugg One Silver porringer and four large Silver Spoons marked IMS’ (probably the initials of her late husband, Isaac). This silverware was bequeathed alongside ‘one halfe of all my wearing Cloths and apparel Silk Woollen Linnen’.

Another granddaughter, Sarah Dobbins, received only £10. Instead, Mary’s servant, Rebecca, would receive ‘the other half of all my Wearing cloaths and apparrel Silk Woollen Linnen’ that had not been given to granddaughter Mary, as well as a ‘Two Eared Silver Cupp marked IMS’ but only if Rebecca ‘Shall be liveing with me att the time of my Decease’. While it was not unusual for a servant to be left personal items such as clothing, it is somewhat curious that Rebecca was bequeathed engraved family silverware, and that she had been prioritised over Sarah, the only other granddaughter mentioned. Equally, we might have assumed that Rebecca was not only a servant but a close friend and companion of the testator – but this is complicated by the fact that the bequest would be void if Rebecca ceased to work for her, and perhaps would even be transferred to the servant who took her place.

It is intriguing that granddaughter Mary should be favoured—in terms of money and material bequests—so clearly over Sarah. It is possible that Sarah was already an adult, and perhaps married and established in life, and therefore less in need of money or the goods needed to set up a household. But this doesn’t entirely explain why she was passed over for the family silverware.

‘one Shilling and no more’

While Mary’s different treatment of her two granddaughters is stark, her treatment of her two sons is even more dramatic. Abraham, the executor of the will, inherited the bulk of his mother’s property and the residue of her estate, which would in turn be divided amongst his own sons. By contrast, her other son Isaac was left ‘one Shilling and no more because of his undutifull behaviour to me’. ‘Cutting off with a shilling’ was an informal means of disinheriting someone by leaving them a deliberately meagre legacy. Having been named in the will, the theory was that the beneficiary could not then claim to have been accidentally overlooked. This is a pointed act, but one that leaves us asking more questions than it answers. We are left with no explanation of what Isaac had done to be so ‘undutifull’, or why Mary so clearly favoured his brother Abraham, and Abraham’s children. We can only assume that those who did read the will, and Abraham, charged with executing it, would be privy to the subtext.

Indeed, in the will of Mary’s husband Isaac, who died some sixteen years earlier in 1709, there is no evidence of a family rift. Isaac Senior left all his properties ‘neare a wharfe called Billingsgate wharfe in East Greenwich aforesaid unto my loveing Wife Mary Skelton’ and ‘after her decease… unto my son Isaac Skelton and his heires for ever’.[5] This was similar to the inheritance given to Mary’s favoured son Abraham, who was left property in Heathgate Street in East Greenwich. Perhaps Isaac Junior had had a very different relationship with his father than with his mother, or perhaps something had happened in the intervening years to irrevocably damage the family bond.

Wills like Mary Skelton’s are tantalising in terms of what they reveal, and what they obscure. She had her own reasons for wishing to delay burial for eight days, for giving only one of her granddaughters large sums of money and silverware, for leaving valuable family heirlooms to a servant, and for giving the bulk of her estate to one son, and a token, and pointed, bequest of a shilling to the other. The extent to which wills can be seen as a true reflection of an individual’s beliefs or wishes has been debated, and many testators were bound by convention, and their intentions shaped by the lawyers or scriveners who drafted these documents. Nonetheless, wills such as Mary Skelton’s provide evidence of the level of personal choice and discretion that could be displayed; the agency to make unapologetic decisions that could shape the course of a life, and the fortunes of entire branches of a family.  

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[1] PROB 11/601/56, Will of Mary Skelton, Widow of East Greenwich, Kent, 07 January 1725.

[2] Robert Hartle, “The Corporation of Corpse-stealers’ Archaeological and historical evidence of bodysnatching in early eighteenth-century London”, in Elizabeth Craig-Atkins and Karen Harvey (eds.), The Material Body: Embodiment, history and archaeology in industrialising England, 1700-1850 (Manchester University Press, 2024), pp. 100–132.

[3] Pilar Nogues-Marco, C. Vam Malle-Sabouret, ‘East India bonds, 1718-1763: early exotic derivatives and London market efficiency’, in European review of economic history, 11 (2007), pp. 367–394.

[4] Calculation used both the Bank of England’s ‘Inflation Calculator’ and The National Archives’ ‘Currency Converter: 1270-2017’ https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator; https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result .

[5] PROB 11/510/90, Will of Isaac Skelton, Joiner of Greenwich, Kent, 29 July 1709.