Perhaps I should begin by explaining why an
article about Wiltshire Wills is appearing in the
Berkshire Family Historian. Wiltshire
Wills is our shorthand for the outstanding
Salisbury Diocesan Probate collection. It
contains 90,000 wills and inventories dating from
Tudor to Victorian times and covers not only
Wiltshire, but also Berkshire, parts of Dorset
and Uffeulme in Devon. There are half a million
individual papers in total, all housed at the
Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office in Trowbridge.
Although the records of the Archdeacon of
Berkshire are held at the Berkshire Record
Office, our office holds several thousand
Berkshire probate documents. The records of the
Dean of Salisbury are here, whose court had
jurisdiction over twelve Berkshire parishes:
Arborfield, Blewbury, Little Coxwell, Great
Faringdon, Hungerford, Hurst, Ruscombe,
Sandhurst, Sonning, Wantage, Wokingham, and
Woodley and Sandford. We also hold the probate
records of the peculiar of the Dean and Canons of
Windsor. In addition, the Consistory Court of
Salisbury inhibited the jurisdiction of the
Archdeacon of Berkshire once in every three years:
during the Bishop's visitation, Berkshire wills
that were normally proved at the Archdeacon's
Court had to be proved in the Bishop's Court.
Those wills are kept at Trowbridge, with the
other Consistory Court records. So the Salisbury
Diocesan collection covers almost the whole
geographical area of Berkshire at certain times.
Out of the 35,000 bundles of documents we have
catalogued so far, 6,000 are from Berkshire.
Making a will
The preamble to an Act of Parliament of 1529 (21
Hen. VIII, c.4) detailed the purpose of will-making,
explaining that testators should pay their debts,
provide for their wives, arrange for the care of
their children and make charitable bequests for
the good of their souls.
A mother who clearly had serious misgivings
about what would become of her family after her
death was Margery Williams of Baydon. She used
her mill to provide for her sons as best she
could, adding this codicil to her will in 1797:
'Whereas it is the Misfortune of my sons
Benjamin and Joseph to be very indiscreet and
imprudent and as they have expended their
Fortunes and I am extremely apprehensive any
Other Property would be in like Manner Wasted and
Yet unwilling that they should be left intirely
Destitute I hereby declare that it is my Will and
Mind that my son Francis Williams to whom I have
given all my Estate Property and Effects shall
... Execute One Bond or obligation ...
Conditioned for the Payment of two shillings each
per Week to them my said sons Benjamin and Joseph
for and during the Term of their respective
natural lives.' 1
Both the quality and quantity of the
information contained in the wills is outstanding.
They can be used to research a wide variety of
topics, including family history. Not only are
large numbers of relatives often named, but their
relationship to the testator may be described.
And when friends are mentioned and overseers are
appointed a picture of the testator's social
world begins to emerge.
Deathbed wills
In the early modern period, wills were often
made when the testator was 'nigh unto death'.
Luckily, 'The liberty of making a testament doth
continue even until the last gasp,' according to
Henry Swinburne in his 'A Briefe Treatise of
Testaments and Last Wills, 1596'. If it was too
late to make a written will, testators could
recite their wishes on their deathbed in the form
of a spoken will, technically called nuncupative.
Out of the 35,000 wills catalogued nearly 1,000
are nuncupative. They can paint a vivid picture:
'James Lucas late of Reading, ...
victualler, died ... of the Dropsie (his death
being more sudden than was expected by his
Physicians ...) and about half an hour before his
Death ... We [the witnesses] saw him ... take
hold of his ... brother by the hand and with
great Earnestness Express these words following
... "For Christ his sake take care of my
Child and be a father to it and take it as your
own for I shall die. Pay every one their own ...
and make a small Burying.2
Women and wills
Until the Married Women's Property Act of 1882
wives could not make a will without their
husband's consent. Out of the 35,000 wills
catalogued only 260 women are identified as wives.
However, there were no restrictions on widows and
spinsters making wills and so far 1,200 have been
identified as spinsters, and 5,500 as widows. The
earlier wills come from a time when descriptions
of women's lives are rare and are therefore
particularly valuable.
Although husbands theoretically held authority
over their wives in the wills a picture of
teamwork and companionship often emerges. Women
were commonly made guardians of the children and
executors of their husband's will, at least until
the eighteenth century. John Culverwell of
Chardstock used his will to offer very practical
support to his wife in her parental duties:
'To my four Children ... I give and
bequeath the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds
to each... ; but if one or more of these my
Children shall displease their... mother by
Marriage or otherwise and not demean him or her
or themselves as becomes a dutiful Child or
Children, then my will and desire is that such
child or children so offending shall receive ...
only fifty pounds each, the remainder of such
Legacy or Legacies given as above, to be to the
Use and benefit of such other Child or Children
as shall demean and behave agreeable and dutiful
to their said Mother, if one, to have the whole,
if more, share and share alike.3
Inventories, accounts and administration
bonds
The collection contains many other documents
besides wills, including inventories, accounts,
administration bonds, commissions, letters and
renunciations - all contributing unique
information. It is particularly strong in
inventories: the deceased's goods were listed as
soon as possible after the death, and were costed
according to their second hand value. Inventories
changed over the centuries - sixteenth century
ones are often just lists of possessions, while
seventeenth century ones tend to be organised
room by room. Their value to research is evident
in many ways: crops listed help build up a
picture of agricultural practice, items related
to trades and crafts may be recorded, and house
sizes, the use of rooms and the level of comfort
enjoyed by the deceased can be determined.
Cataloguing
A principal aim of the Wiltshire Wills Project
is to catalogue all go,ooo groups of probate
documents onto a database. It will be fully
searchable and should be a wonderful resource for
researchers - a much-needed replacement for the
present 29 Victorian manuscript volumes. We are
on target to complete the collection by April
2003. A printout of all the Berkshire wills is to
be sent to the Berkshire Family History Society.
We hope to make the database available on the
internet in due course. In addition to the
database, indexes to the wills are to be
published in volume form by the Wiltshire Record
Society.
One particularly pleasing aspect of the
cataloguing has been the finding of misplaced
documents. A marriage licence bond was discovered
with the Dean's wills and has been placed in the
main licence series. An administration bond for
the goods of Elizabeth Pratt of Faringdon, issued
by the peculiar court of Faringdon, was sent to
the Berkshire Record Office where it was reunited
with Elizabeth Pratt's nuncupative will - the
documents had probably been apart for centuries.
Over 2000 wills from a miscellaneous series have
been returned to their appropriate court and in
many cases have been matched up with other
documents relating to a particular testator.
Preservation and conservation
For many years the collection has been poorly
stored. Instead of lying flat in boxes of a
suitable size, the wills have been folded into
small parcels and forced into inadequate
containers. A significant quantity of the
material is in poor condition. Repairs to badly
damaged documents are underway and every single
document is being carefully flattened and
repackaged in custom made archival quality
folders and boxes. This work is led by the
conservation team with the able assistance of our
volunteers.
Digitisation
Once the database is published we foresee an
increased demand for the collection from
researchers. increased usage would make the wills
more vulnerable to damage, and this was one of
the crucial factors behind the decision to
produce surrogate images of the collection by
digitisation.
The images will initially be made available on
DVDs at the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office
and at the Central Reference Library in Swindon.
In order to ensure that the images produced by
the Project are those most suitable for
researchers, we conducted a user evaluation of
images of wills, digitised at different levels of
colour and resolution. Over 200 readers were
consulted and the results of the survey have
defined the specification for the images.
Funding
Thanks to the support of local organisations,
we received a grant Of £200,000 from the
Heritage Lottery Fund: all local contributions
were vital and we are most grateful for the many
generous donations we have received, including
the £2000 from your own Society. We continue to
raise funds for the Project. I hope you will
agree that it is money well spent - the Project
will make sure these wonderful documents are
cared for better than ever in the future and we
are looking forward to the day when the database
and the full colour digital images of the wills
are available to researchers.
References:
1. WSRO/P5/1799/27
2. WSRO/P1/2Register/316B
3. WSRO/P5/1797/7
Bibliography:
Tom Arkell, Nesta Evans and Nigel Goose (Editors).
When death do us part. Leopard's
Head Press Limited, Oxford, 2000 Anthony J Camp.
Wills and their whereabouts. London, 1974
Jane Cox. Affection Defying the Power of death:
Wills, Probate and Death Duty Records. Federation
of Family History Societies, 1993
Jeremy Gibson. Probate Jurisdictions: where
to look for wills.
Federation of Family History Societies, 1994
Lucy Jefferis is the Project Archivist at the
Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, responsible
for the Wiltshire Wills Project.
