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 to the dead with the marking of All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day. While Protestantism rejected purgatory and prayers for the […]
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 of Edward VI, having been mayor of the city three times.[1] In the first few lines of his will Hunte identified himself as ‘one of […]
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 when writing this post. In this month’s post we’re thinking not just about the ‘content’ of a will – the details of the bequests it […]
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 will of Thomas Pechill, esquire of Normanton in Lincolnshire, which was composed in September 1665.1 Pechill died within a few months of making his will, […]
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 project volunteer There is a formula, a routine, to official copies of probate records. The same impersonal clerical hand, standard phrases about mind, bodily health […]
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, or entered a certain profession, or threats to disinherit those who behaved poorly or ignored parental instruction. These caveats and contingencies reflect a key reason […]
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 died in Bury St Edmunds, and when his will was proved in 1552, his profession was described as ‘Scrivener’: someone who wrote and copied legal […]
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 is full of rich detail about Helen’s possessions and what they meant to her. She itemises silk dresses, crimson quilts, and chinaware, and sets out […]
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 died in Sutton Saint James, Lincolnshire, in 1604, and had a lot of land, money, and farm animals to distribute. The dispersal of the estate […]
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 objects and possessions listed in them. This blog post is the first in our ‘Will of the Month’ series. Each month we will put a […]