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 allow us to involve hundreds of new volunteers in the project who will work with us to transcribe our sample of 25,000 English wills made […]
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 […]
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 […]
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