Tagged: Clothing

Content note: this post discusses child loss and death in childbirth. As a project team we’ve now spent two years carefully reading and analysing hundreds of early modern wills. To a certain extent we’ve become very familiar with them: we have a sense of what we might find, how bequests are usually phrased, and we […]

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 ancient parish which included the Spitalfields area, was the heart of the London Huguenot community in the early eighteenth century: indeed some Londoners ‘complained that […]

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 dozens of possessions and personal items, and who made bequests to large numbers of friends and family. Most recently we have also written about the […]

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 lady-in-waiting to both Catherine of Aragon and her daughter princess Mary (Margaret served her before she was crowned Mary I).[1] Her meticulous will is full […]

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 about the symbolism of the body being laid to rest. This is a longstanding interest of his – you can listen to one of his […]

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 complex administration of the wills of those who died thousands of miles from England, the movement of people and property, and the blurred boundary between […]

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 the discussion of this will here. To join in with reading and transcribing early modern wills, have a look at our Zooniverse site here. This […]

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 write about. For December’s post, we wanted to write about a will with a loosely ‘Christmassy’ theme. Because the names of all the testators whose […]

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, the humble woollen cap, could underpin personal relationships and have multiple meanings within an individual’s life. Caps were a big part of Huggens’ world: making […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 instrument by which a person regulates the rights of others to their property or family after their death. Yet their value as historical records is […]