{"id":1721,"date":"2024-07-09T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/materialcultureofwills\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2024-07-09T06:09:57","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T06:09:57","slug":"using-wills-in-historical-research-the-whats-in-a-will-workshops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/materialcultureofwills\/2024\/07\/09\/using-wills-in-historical-research-the-whats-in-a-will-workshops\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Wills in Historical Research: the What’s in a Will Workshops"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Generously funded by the University of Exeter\u2019s Public Engagement with Research Fund. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many thanks to the knowledgeable and generous attendees at our two recent workshops (June 2024) at The National Archives and the University of Exeter. Both days were marked by lively conversations and the fruitful exchange of ideas have kindled plenty more flames to feed our project furnace. We were particularly pleased that some of our Expert Volunteers were able to attend \u2013 more on them below \u2013 and more generally we were greatly fortunate in the wealth of expertise that participants bought to the table. In this post I report what we got up to and reflect on some of the key points of discussion that emerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Emily Vine talks to attendees at The National Archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Jane Whittle discusses gender & wills at University of Exeter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Presentations <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workshops took the form of a mix of talks and discussions about wills as remarkably rich historical resources alongside activities where we processed and analysed some wills themselves. We began by introducing our project, explaining its intellectual origins and the stage we are at in our quest to transcribe 25,000 wills. This was also a means to celebrate the contribution of our 22 Expert Volunteers<\/a>, the palaeographers who have transcribed hundreds of pages of wills for us that have been used to train our Transkribus Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) model. Mark Bell, the project\u2019s Technical Expert and Consultant at The National Archives (TNA) explained the complicated process of automating transcription, and reported that the HTR model is performing well when applied to the digital copies of wills in TNA\u2019s collection. As expected, more training will be undertaken to improve its performance further before it is applied to all 25,000 documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also outlined the key economic, social and cultural themes that we will be exploring through our data (see our \u2018About\u2019<\/a> page for more on our method and research questions). Our project leader, Jane Whittle, gave a more detailed talk on household items in early modern wills, in particular the different strategies that were deployed in women\u2019s wills in comparison with those of men. Once our database is complete we will be able to examine Jane\u2019s insight that there were male and female cultures of will making from a variety of different angles across our whole period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Conversations continue at The National Archives over lunch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Team members Mark Bell & Harry Smith chat in the tea break<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In one of two lightning talks I gave a brief summary of the myriad of historical topics that historians draw on wills to research: biographical or family histories; local case studies; microhistories; studies of occupational hierarchies, consumerism and global trade, and material culture all got a nod. I spent a bit more time on the way that historians in my own field of religious history have exploited wills, since they are one of very few types of source that survive in great numbers which might <\/em>yield information about belief and confessional identity (for instance through distinctive preambles or bequests for intercessory prayer).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emily Vine then gave a second speedy overview of the way that testators added conditions and caveats to their wills to cater for \u2018the uncertainty of this transitory life\u2019, a reminder too that wills only show us a testator\u2019s intentions, not what actually happened after they died (read Emily\u2019s blog post<\/a> for more detail).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Activities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our first interactive session was designed to consider the materiality of wills as sources. We gave attendees two copies of the same will and invited them to compare them \u2013 an exercise that was actually suggested by one of our Expert Volunteers, Judy Lester. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Original will of Margaret Nelham, The National Archives PROB 10. Note red lines on the paper & the messiness of the text. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Attendees at The National Archives compare the PROB 10 and PROB 11 will versions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first version took the form of photos of an original will that Emily had found in TNA series PROB 10:<\/strong> Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Other Probate Jurisdictions: Bundles of Original Wills<\/strong> and Sentences. It was the will of Margaret Nelham of St Bartholomew, London, made in July 1665 and proved in August of the same year. We compared this original with the copy of Margaret\u2019s will in the church court register, part of TNA series PROB 11<\/strong>: the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and related Probate Jurisdictions: Will Registers<\/strong>. It is PROB 11 registered copies of wills that TNA put on microfilm and later digitised, so when you consult a TNA will online it is the PROB 11 copy that you are viewing. Since we are applying our HTR model to the digitised wills, we are producing transcriptions of the registered copies, not the wills themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our comparison of Margaret\u2019s PROB 10 original will with its PROB 11 registered copy drew attention to the benefits and drawbacks of working with either version, allowing us to discuss both the context in which wills were drawn up and how they mix generic with distinctive features in ways that can be tricky to interpret. Indeed, we concluded that is no small part of their appeal for researchers, one that invites deeper contextualisation and record linkage in an attempt to tackle all the questions that an individual will poses. We could probably have talked about this one will for the rest of the day, indeed I have a lot more to say about it, but that will have to wait for a future blog post \u2013 I will move on\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Harry Smith introduces Zooniverse to Exeter attendees<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the most exciting parts of the days for me was that we were able to preview our Zooniverse site (currently near to completion). Harry Smith is responsible for creating and running our site so he introduced this crowdsourcing platform and explained how The Material Culture of Wills site will work. The Zooniverse platform allows volunteers to quickly start transcribing parts of our 25,000 transcriptions \u2013 on our site users are given an image from a PROB 11 digitised will, with lines of text that has been automatically generated by the HTR model underneath. The volunteer is then asked to check, correct or transcribe the line\/s. Our workshop participants speedily mastered the basics and were not only able to give us vital feedback and suggestions for improvements to the interface, they also completed 1308 transcribing tasks before the end of the next week! This was a really encouraging debut and which bodes well for our official Zooniverse launch in the next few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can hopefully tell, the workshops flew by in a flurry of creativity and dialogue \u2013 we were delighted by how well both went. The chance to spend two days with like-minded researchers, all of whom share a fascination with, and appreciation of, the wealth of information that wills contain about the past was incredibly rewarding, and we plan to build on the success of these events in future. In the meantime, if you want to know more about how to locate and analyse early modern wills, please see the reading below and our growing list of research resources<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n