I have many English ancestors. My mother was a first generation Canadian with both her parents born in Kent so you can imagine my huge British ancestry. I only recently discovered that I could order wills and inventories for my British ancestors from the Kent History & Library Centre in England. After a few hours searching I found and ordered 17 (yes 17!!) for my direct ancestors.
This is page 2 of the 1577 Inventory of my 12th great-grandfather Sylvester Spencer.
This is one of the earliest that I received and I am slowly struggling through it.
Take a look at the enlarged portion below with the bits that I've managed to figure out (I haven't done the cash amounts for each item):
Item: His wearing apparrel
Item: three featherbeds that belong to (Thomas smyth?)
Item: ????
Item: One tablecloth and two rowels [rolls] and fower [four] pillowcotes [ancient word for pillowcases] and fower [four] table napkins
Feel free to drop your suggestions here! This is tough. It's a 2 1/2 page inventory and his will which I have not yet looked at is one page.
9 comments:
are you starting with the oldest? As wills tend to be written to a formulae I think I would have started with a more modern one ,but good luck
three fetherbeds & that belonge to them 4 pounds
ix (4) payer (pair) of shete
Ah, yes. Enough to make your eyes ache. I've struggled through a similar will and finally just left the parts I couldn't figure out.
Thanks for this, Lorine. I noticed that some of the Kent links are to FindMyPast, so I have just found a number of baptisms, marriages and burials there, many with images :-)
Looks like a corrupt spelling of "pannier of shot", a bag of ammunition?
Someone else suggested a pair of sheets
Haz, I started with the one that appealed to me the most. I've read lots of wills from 1800 on so I wasn't worried about not understanding any formula.
It's fun but requires a lot of patience and having others to compare to verify letter formations
Thanks Sooty28! I now have the entire inventory and accompanying will transcribe thanks to Lifelines Research (Dave Annal)
Haz I forgot to say no that will 1577 is not the oldest. I have one from 1543 but it's in Latin!
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