Laura Sangha What do you get if you combine a historian, a musician, and 25,000 historic wills? All sorts of fun things! In this post I reflect on what composer,...
Continue reading...This month’s post explores the will of Daniel Godfroy, a Huguenot and ‘Master Weaver of Stepney’, who died in 1726 and whose will was ‘Translated from the French’.[1] Stepney, an...
Continue reading...With thanks to Harry Smith for help with tracking down Mary Carlton’s burial record. Our recent ‘Will of the Month’ blog posts have featured the wills of testators who listed...
Continue reading...Will Johnson, Barbara Tearle, Emily Vine This edition of our ‘Will of the Month’ series is a very special one. It’s the fruit of a collaboration: the research and transcription...
Continue reading...This month’s post examines the will of Margaret ‘Pennington’ Cooke (d. 1552), a widow of Hornchurch in Essex. Margaret Cooke moved in prominent circles and had royal connections – she was a...
Continue reading...This month’s post has been inspired by conversations with the project’s Creative Fellow, composer, arranger, performer and lyricist Chris Hoban. Chris has recently been analysing the wills of sextons and thinking...
Continue reading...Content Note: This blog post discusses enslaved people This month’s post takes us on a journey from London to Calcutta via the South Atlantic island of St Helena, navigating the...
Continue reading...This month’s featured testament belongs to John Pooke, a citizen and haberdasher of London who made his will in 1607. It was only once I sat down to read Pooke’s...
Continue reading...Laura Sangha At the end of last year I was lucky enough to be chosen as a host for an Exeter Arts and Culture Creative Fellow for the project ‘Wills...
Continue reading...Many thanks to the Zooniverse users who contributed to conversations about this will on our talkboards, including Will and Barbara, and @sk001, @studentius, @Tearle, @ManyHeaded, and @HJSmith .You can view...
Continue reading...Our project is analysing a sample of 25,000 wills, and when writing each ‘Will of the Month’ post, it can be difficult to know how to select just one to...
Continue reading...This month’s post analyses the will of John Huggens or Huggyns, a ‘Capper’ or cap-maker who died in Gloucester in 1544.[1] Huggens’ will shows how just one type of object,...
Continue reading...The end of October and the beginning of November marks ‘Allhallowtide’ – the time of the year when Western Christians, including in early modern England, have traditionally turned their thoughts...
Continue reading...We’ve recently announced an exciting new phase of the ‘Material Culture of Wills’ project – the launch of our Zooniverse site, a ‘crowdsourcing’ platform that is enabling us to involve hundreds of...
Continue reading...We’re delighted to announce an exciting new phase of the ‘Material Culture of Wills’ project – the launch of our Zooniverse site. We hope that the Zooniverse ‘crowdsourcing’ platform will...
Continue reading...Emily Vine This ‘Will of the Month’ post features the will of a man ‘local’ to the University of Exeter: Alderman Thomas Hunte, who died in 1548 in the reign...
Continue reading...Emily Vine Thanks to all participants at our recent workshops at The National Archives and the University of Exeter, where we discussed this will. I have drawn on these discussions...
Continue reading...In this month’s post, one of our Expert Volunteers shares a fascinating will that he transcribed as part of our project. Austen Hamilton, Project Volunteer This month’s post explores the...
Continue reading...Generously funded by the University of Exeter’s Public Engagement with Research Fund. Many thanks to the knowledgeable and generous attendees at our two recent workshops (June 2024) at The National...
Continue reading...In this month’s post, one of our Expert Volunteers shares her research into one of the wills she came across when transcribing pages for our project. Liz Wood, archivist and...
Continue reading...Emily Vine Early modern folk frequently added ‘conditions’ to their wills: that a sum of money would not be given until a beneficiary reached the age of twenty-one, got married,...
Continue reading...Emily Vine In this month’s post we explore the will of John Tylney, a man who had made his living from writing the wills of others. Tylney had lived and...
Continue reading...Laura Sangha It’s safe to say that the Wills Project wouldn’t be possible without drawing on the skills and knowledge of a wide variety of volunteer ‘citizens’ – or rather,...
Continue reading...Our third will of the month, that of affluent fashionable lady Helen Spratt (d.1726), is as long and as detailed as that of the Lincolnshire farmer Ralph Wrighte [link], and...
Continue reading...Harry Smith In this blog post, Research Fellow Harry Smith provides an overview of some of the innovative digital methods used by our project. Read on to find out more...
Continue reading...We are currently re-advertising our funded PhD studentship Global Commodities in Early Modern Wills. The focus of the studentship is intended to be broad and elastic so that the successful...
Continue reading...This month’s featured will is longer and more detailed than previous examples, stretching to three and a half pages. It’s the will of Ralph Wrighte, a landowner and farmer who...
Continue reading...Hello, and welcome to our first ‘Project Progress’ blog post. In this blog post you will find an overview of some of the things we’ve been up to since the...
Continue reading...Emily Vine Our first blog post introduced the different features of early modern wills, and provided some examples of how we can determine the ‘meaning’ ascribed to some of the...
Continue reading...Emily Vine What’s in an early modern will? On the one hand the answer to this question is straightforward – according to the legal definition a will is the documentary...
Continue reading...Throughout the life of the project we will be posting about our progress, findings and activities on this blog. You can filter the posts either by choosing a category, or...
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