Probate documents (that is Wills and Inventories) are hugely important sources for the study of early modern England. For Viae Regiae they are being used to build a picture of the networks of people moving goods across England.

Background

Apart from their appeal to family historians, wills and inventories are potentially a very rich source of economic and occupational data. The deceased may have recorded in their wills an occupation or trade directly connected with transportation (carriers, wagoners, horsemen, or boatmen, for example, or indeed merchants), while their inventories may reveal geographic details of their credit and debt networks.

While the occupations of the deceased are often catalogued, and some of these catalogues are now available online, we are anxious not to overlook the uncatalogued details or the very many records which might appear only in paper or card indexes. Collating all of this information is an enormous undertaking that will only be possible through the generosity of a network of volunteers working in local archives.

The Victoria County History of Hampshire volunteer group has been working on the transcription of 16th- and 17th-century wills, focused on Basingstoke and its surrounding rural area. You can read about their work here.

For an example of a C17th merchant's probate inventory click here.

Draft Probate project charter

Goals

The ultimate aim of the probate team is to place people within the Viae Regiae transport framework, which is examining inland transportation networks in England and Wales, 1530-1680. Goods move with land and waterborne transport by people who manned that transport infrastructure. The eventual goal of this team is to collate all of the probate material relating to people who may have worked in this sphere in England and Wales in this period, from carters to innkeepers.

Deliverables

While the people we research delivered the crucial goods of life to the people of early modern England, our aim remains much more humble. In the first instance the location of all the people in probate record across England and Wales will be listed for their location, dates and trade. In the second instance a detailed project ought to elaborate on each document, the relationships and places within them to reconstruct part of the social world and economic networks. Longer-term the work done lends itself to members of this team or others to use the data collated to consider a range of research focuses including material culture and social networks.

Proposed project methodology

Our approach involves identifying wills and inventories before converting them using Transkribus to text form. With the Recogito software we can then record the places mentioned so that people, their occupations and places can be entered into the Viae Regiae database.

Proposed timeline

Probate will run throughout the Viae Regiae project and potentially beyond with wide implications for our understanding of the movement of goods and transport links. In the first year to two years we aim to provide a skeleton of findings from which further analysis can be conducted in the following years.

Required resources (people)

At the moment we have a core, dedicated team. The nature of probate means that many people have experience of it and could assist in the long run, especially once our processes are put in place during 'seed' project phase in the spring of 2021.

Required resources (technology)

The text-recognition system Transkribus is forming a key part of this project for the collation of probate transcriptions. Also required is the software Recogito. Much of the probate project can be carried out on personal computers. There are however elements of the work that will require physically attending archives, particularly for material held in local record offices.

Project risks

Individuals and societies past and present made the act of dying a complex procedure, with inherent social and cultural considerations for all involved. In early modern England dying ‘had become a cultural ritual' [J. D. Alsop, 'Religious Preambles in Early Modern English Wills as Formulae', Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40.1 (1989), 19]. We should therefore use wills carefully as their simplicity often ‘cloaks a complex of laws and customs and a tenuous link between precept and practice' [Jeff and Nancy Cox, ‘Probate 1500-1800: a system in Transition' in When Death Do Us Part: Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England, 14].

Current project (Spring 2021)

Primary aim: Transcribing wills of all innkeepers in Prerogative Court of Canterbury prior to 1650 to shed more light on the growth of transport infrastructure. Initial work by Jo Sear has found connections along the Great North Road amongst individuals named in the first sampled will, which is an amazing start.

Secondary aim: Producing enough transcriptions of PCC wills from sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to train a Handwriting Recognition Model to assist with further transcriptions.

Method:

Will of Thomas Harryes, Innkeeper of Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk, PROB 11/31/25; dated January 21st, 1546

Will of John Humberstone, Innkeeper of Little Amwell in the parish of Ware, Hertfordshire, PROB 11/61/339; dated August 1st, 1579

Step 1 - Produce full diplomatic transcriptions of the wills using Transkribus lite, following this guidance on transcription conventions: https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/howto/transkribus-transcription-conventions/

Step 2 - Load transcriptions into Recogito to tag named places and individuals.

Transcription Conventions:

We have settled on producing full diplomatic transcriptions, as per the guidance from Transkribus: https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/howto/transkribus-transcription-conventions/ This will help to train a Handwriting Recognition Model, variant spellings of place names for the gazetteer, as well as producing accurate transcriptions in general.

First steps:

Choose a will from the list below and edit the list to indicate you're working on it
Login to Transkribus Lite https://transkribus.eu/lite/ (ask Justin to given access to our collection, if you haven't before)
Open the "ViaeRegaeInnkeepers" collection, and find your will using the Filter tool (most have the testator's name as part of their title, but you might need to use some or all of the PROB11 reference to find the later ones in the list)
Open your will and click the pen icon (top right) to enter edit mode
Click a line on the image, it will highlight in blue, and you can then transcribe that line in the corresponding blue line below

Key conventions:

Lines must correspond between transcription and image - ensure you're transcribing the line that is highlighted on the image
There might be some spurious or blank lines - just ignore them for now
Transcriptions should be literal - spellings and contractions should be repeated verbatim, capital letters should reflect the original (even if it doesn't make sense!), and line breaks should be respected
Punctuation should generally be ignored
“et” abbreviations should be transcribed as & (ampersand)
“es” flourishes at the end of words should be transcribed as “es”
Superscript text, for example representing an abbreviation, should be transcribed and tagged by selecting the text and pressing the x² button (the resulting superscript shows up in the Edit mode, but not the Preview or Side by Side views)
Lines indicating contractions should be ignored
Uncertain words should be transcribed as literally as you can, but then tagged by selecting the text and pressing the "?Uncertain?" button
Transcribe only the actual will we are interested in - ignore the beginning or end of other wills, and the Latin probate statements

NB:

Remember to save your work using the button in the bottom right
When you are finished, click "In Progress", above "Save Changes" in the bottom right, and change the document status to "Ready for Checking"
Remember to update this Wiki page with your progress!

Sample:

UKDA index to PCC contains 69 records for "innkeeper", "hostler", or "ostler" between 1528 and 1649 (the index is not perfect but is a start).

In the following table rows with a PROB11 reference have been downloaded by JC.

forename	surname	occupation	parish_place	county_country	date	TNA Reference	Status	Uploaded to Transkribus
William	Cole or Cool	Innkeeper	Sudbury	Suffolk	15 May 1528	PROB 11/22/487	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
Thomas	Harryes or Harres	Innkeeper	Bury Saint Edmunds	Suffolk	21 January 1546	PROB 11/31/25	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
Christopher	Hickes	Innkeeper	Boston	Lincolnshire	04 February 1567	PROB 11/49/41	Jo done. Joe- checked one issue, agree with Jo's assesment but have left as is tricky	YES
James	Holte or Holt	Ostler	Stroud	Gloucestershire	08 October 1575	PROB 11/57/434	Jo done. Note first three pages of PDF are another person's will. Joe- nothing to check	YES
William	Melsell	Ostler	Bristol	Gloucestershire	29 February 1576	PROB 11/58/31	Colin Greenstreet first draft completed. Note first five pages of PDF are another person's will. Joe agree with most suggestions apart from Collen which I think should be Cowen. Have left the Latin	YES
Thomas	Henesworth	Innkeeper	All Saints Stamford	Lincolnshire	28 January 1577	PROB 11/59/243	Colin Greenstreet. Joe checked	YES
John	Humberstone	Innkeeper	Ware	Hertfordshire	04 November 1579	PROB 11/61/499	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
Launcelot	Thompson	Hostler	Abington	Berkshire	14 December 1582	PROB 11/64/559	Jo done. Note this is a Memorandum on p.2 of PDF. Joe checked	YES
John	Yonge	Innkeeper	Burington	Somerset	17 August 1586	PROB 11/69/451	Colin Greenstreet first draft completed; English checked Tamsin, no queries remaining (except Latin)	YES
Edward	ap John alias Kinge	Ostler	Saint Mary Magdalene	Surrey	31 July 1587	PROB 11/71/79	Colin Greenstreet. Joe checked	YES
Thomas	Russell	Innkeeper	Chipping Barnet	Hertfordshire	12 December 1588	PROB 11/73/162	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
William	Thomas	Innkeeper	Shaston	Dorset	24 November 1589	PROB 11/74/472	Colin Greenstreet. Joe checked	YES
John	Salwey	Innkeeper	Almondsbury	Gloucestershire	29 November 1597	PROB 11/90/568	Colin Greenstreet first draft completed. Joe- agree with suggestions. have left Latin	YES
Morrice	Gauntlett	Innkeeper	Salisbury	Wiltshire	06 May 1598	PROB 11/91/352	Joe done. Jo checked - one issue remaining, agree with Joe's transcription but not sure what is intended. JC checked - suggest "behauest"? error for behest, or bequest?	YES
Henry	Bennett	Hostler	Saint Thomas Bristol	Gloucestershire	07 May 1599	PROB 11/93/314	1^st draft done Stephen Gadd (talk) 17:20, 30 March 2021 (UTC) JC Checked	YES
Richard	Hogson	Innkeeper	Saint Botolph without Aldersgate	City of London	10 September 1603	PROB 11/102/159	JC Done- Joe one issue left. Think it is 'fath' but with only first part of the 'h' not sure how we transcribe	YES
Robert	Nedle alias Nele	Innkeeper	Saint Johns Street	Middlesex	02 December 1603	PROB 11/102/656	Colin Greenstreet. Joe checked, one issue page 3. 'douiges' as in dowages?	YES
Edward	Wetherton	Innkeeper	Marlborough	Wiltshire	24 April 1604	PROB 11/103/437	Joe done. Jo checked - one issue remaining, agree with Joe's transcription but not sure what is intended	YES
Hugh	Evans	Head Ostler	All Hallows Lombard Street	City of London	18 May 1604	PROB 11/104/108	Joe done. Jo checked.	YES
John	Kynge	Innkeeper	Wells	Somerset	19 August 1608	PROB 11/112/206	Colin Greenstreet first draft started. To be finished. Joe looked at, the lines at the beginning of the transcription on p1 have been mixed up with the ones on the side for the name. Rather than redoing is there a way of taking these lines out and so realinging everything? You'll see what I mean - JC DONE - Can someone check few queries? Jo - I've looked, still one that I can't get	YES
William	Dixon or Dixson	Innkeeper	Southwark	Surrey	24 January 1610	PROB 11/115/56	Joe done. Jo checked-two surnames are unclear, agree with Joe's transcription but v. odd surnames	YES
William	Keynes	Innkeeper	Chipping Sodbury	Gloucestershire	25 April 1610	PROB 11/115/365	Jo done. Joe- one issue remaining	YES
John	Hodge	Innkeeper	Bampton	Devon	06 July 1610	PROB 11/116/165	Colin Greenstreet started. Jo finished	YES
William	Sherwood	Innkeeper	Royston	Hertfordshire	15 November 1613	PROB 11/122/475	Jo done. Joe- one issue remaining, agree with Jo but would like confirmation	YES
Richard	Lea	Innkeeper	Evesham	Worcestershire	21 January 1614	PROB 11/123/36	Jo done. Joe- one issue remaining	YES
Reginald	Cliston	Innkeeper	New Windsor	Berkshire	11 January 1614	PROB 11/123/13	JC done. Joe checked	YES
Mathew	Browne	Innkeeper	Colchester	Essex	10 May 1615	PROB 11/125/412	Colin Greenstreet started. Jo finished	YES
Roger	James	Innkeeper	Hereford	Herefordshire	12 January 1616	PROB 11/127/24	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe- one issue left, agree with transcription but never heard of it. Jo - agree with 'hurthen', they're 'harden' sheets, made from hemp, have seen this spelling before	YES
John	Atkinson	Innkeeper	Islington	Middlesex	10 April 1618	PROB 11/131/368	Jo done; Tamsin checked, no queries	YES
Richard	Barker	Innkeeper	Saint Giles in the Fields	Middlesex	22 June 1618	PROB 11/131/753	Jo done. Joe- one issue left, 'Turmin' or 'Tarmin' perhaps?	YES
John	Hewes alias Edwardes	Ostler	Stourbridge	Worcestershire	11 May 1619	PROB 11/133/556	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe- one issue remaining	YES
George	Iszarde	Innkeeper	Ware	Hertfordshire	07 June 1621	PROB 11/137/506	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked	YES
Owen	Conowaye or Conway	Innkeeper	Hadleigh	Suffolk	10 September 1621	PROB 11/138/155	Joe done. Jo checked	YES
John	Butcher alias Powle	Innkeeper	Norwich	Norfolk	01 December 1621	PROB 11/138/501	Jo done. Joe checked https://viaeregiae.slack.com/files/U01MT9E9HV1/F01S0QU10CT/red_lion_and_white_horse__norwich.pdf	YES
Robert	Saxton	Innkeeper	Aylesbury	Buckinghamshire	02 July 1622	PROB 11/140/18	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked	YES
John	Tennante or Tennant	Innkeeper	London		31 August 1625	PROB 11/146/364	Joe done. Jo checked	YES
Tobias	Littlepage	Innkeeper	Little Horwood	Buckinghamshire	04 December 1626	PROB 11/150/490	Tamsin done; ready to check (2nd page only, 1st page is Charles Butler). Joe checked	YES
Charles	Glover	Innkeeper	Somerton	Somerset	24 June 1628	PROB 11/153/727	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
John	Hellier	Innkeeper	Taunton	Somerset	04 October 1630	PROB 11/158/246	Joe done. Jo checked - one issue remaining, agree with Joe's transcription but not sure what is intended	YES
Stephen	Pitway	Innkeeper	Bengeworth	Worcestershire	19 March 1631	PROB 11/159/373	Joe done. Jo checked	YES
Henry	Birch	Innkeeper	Worcester	Worcestershire	24 August 1632	PROB 11/162/282	Joe done. Jo checked - one issue remaining. Middle page duplicated	YES
John	Davy	Ostler	Wells	Somerset	09 May 1632	PROB 11/161/577	Joe done. Jo checked	YES
John	Ratcliffe	Innkeeper	Farningham	Kent	23 September 1633	PROB 11/164/381	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked	YES
Richard	Windever	Innkeeper	Saint George in Southwark	Surrey	06 December 1634	PROB 11/166/608	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
George	Baldwyn or Baldwin	Innkeeper	Saint Saviour Southwark	Surrey	26 January 1635	PROB 11/167/68	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
Edward	Bishopp	Innkeeper	Bucknell	Oxfordshire	02 December 1635	PROB 11/169/425	Joe done. Jo checked.	YES
George	Berry	Innkeeper	Wellington	Somerset	11 March 1636	PROB 11/170/298	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe- one issue	YES
Henry	Blundell	Innkeeper	Saint Saviour Southwark	Surrey	23 January 1637	PROB 11/173/82	JC done; checked Tamsin, one query remains	YES
John	Evans	Innkeeper	Saint Mary Le Strand	Middlesex	19 May 1637	PROB 11/174/179	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked	YES
Richard	Irwin or Irwyn	Innkeeper	Royston	Cambridgeshire	27 October 1638	PROB 11/178/206	Jo done. Joe one issue	YES
Edward	Buxton	Innkeeper	Ashbourne	Derbyshire	12 October 1639	PROB 11/181/236	Joe done. Jo checked - few queries remain, but I can't improve on Joe's transcription	YES
John	Wicking or Wickinge	Innkeeper	Cowden	Kent	28 April 1640	PROB 11/182/558	Jo done. Joe checked	YES
John	Warner	Innkeeper	Isleworth	Middlesex	12 April 1641	PROB 11/185/490	Joe done. Jo checked - one difficult surname remaining, agree with Joe's transcription	YES
Samuell	Cottie or Cotye	Innkeeper	Rye	Sussex	15 March 1642	PROB 11/188/345	JC working. Jo finished. Needs checking.	YES
William	Tompson	Ostler	Dent	Yorkshire	27 May 1642	PROB 11/189/304	David Cant ready to check. Joe checked	YES
Henry	Wills	Innkeeper	Lambeth	Surrey	28 March 1644	PROB 11/192/2	Joe done. Jo checked.	YES
William	Darwent	Innkeeper	Saint Clement Danes	Middlesex	11 January 1645	PROB 11/192/220	Joe done. Jo checked.	YES
James	Hunt	Innkeeper	Saint Martin in the Fields	Middlesex	24 October 1646	PROB 11/197/590	Joe done. Jo checked - few issues, but can't clarify these.	YES
William	Heynes	Innkeeper	Banbury	Oxfordshire	15 June 1646	PROB 11/196/377	Tamsin begun. Jo finished. Needs checking.	YES
Henry	Potter	Innkeeper	Claverley	Shropshire	15 June 1646	PROB 11/196/387	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked	YES
Thomas	Homes	Innkeeper	Hereford	Herefordshire	02 June 1646	PROB 11/196/267	Jo done, very challenging, lots of queries, needs a second eye!	YES
John	Hopkinson	Innkeeper	Wantage	Berkshire	08 September 1647	PROB 11/201/581	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked.	YES
Robert	Roads	Innkeeper	Wiveliscombe	Somerset	19 May 1647	PROB 11/200/362	Tamsin mostly done but gave up on the addendum, cannot make head nor tail of it!	YES
Christopher	Bremer or Breamer	Innkeeper	Saint Martin in the Fields	Middlesex	15 March 1647	PROB 11/199/676	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked.	YES
William	Browne	Innkeeper	Bedford	Bedfordshire	27 January 1648	PROB 11/203/155	Tamsin first draft done. Joe checked The Rose	YES
Robert	Alwarke	Innkeeper	Westfield	Sussex	22 June 1648	PROB 11/204/559	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked	YES
William	Shorland	Innkeeper	Dunster	Somerset	04 May 1649	PROB 11/208/51	Tamsin 1st draft done, Joe checked.	YES
William	Brundreth	Innkeeper	Stretford	Lancashire	04 July 1649	PROB 11/208/658	Tamsin 1st draft done, Joe checked.	YES
Robert	Jenkinson	Innkeeper	Saint Peter in the East Oxford	Oxfordshire	13 November 1649	PROB 11/210/120	Tamsin done; ready to check. Joe checked	YES

Executors (the team)

Justin Colson
Colin and Bron, his vizsla dog
Joe Saunders
Jo Sear

The probate team are always on the lookout for interested new members! We'd be excited to hear from anyone with experience working with early modern wills and inventories. Our team so far includes academic lecturers, PhD students, family and local historians.

Probate secondary reading

For those of you interested in learning more about probate material and its uses for historical study find below a short bibliogrpahy of some secondary reading.

Patrick Wallis, Justin Colson, and David Chilosi, ‘Structural Change and Economic Growth in the British Economy before the Industrial Revolution, 1500-1800’, Journal of Economic History, 78.3 (2018), 862–903 <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050718000396>;

Sebastian A. J. Keibek, ‘Using Probate Data for Estimating Historical Male Occupational Structures’, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure Working Paper, 27, 2016 <http://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/abstracts/paper27.pdf>;

When Death Do Us Part: Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England, ed. by Tom Arkell, Nesta Evans, and Nigel Goose, Supplement / University of Hertfordshire, Department of Humanities, Local Population Studies (Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 2000);

Christopher Kitching, ‘Probate During the Civil War and Interregnum. Part 1’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 5.5 (1976), 283–93;

Joanne Sear and Ken Sneath, The Origins of the Consumer Revolution: from brass pots to clocks (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020). <https://www.routledge.com/The-Origins-of-the-Consumer-Revolution-in-England-From-Brass-Pots-to-Clocks/Sear-Sneath/p/book/9780367341114>;

J. D. Alsop, 'Religious Preambles in Early Modern English Wills as Formulae' Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 40.1 (1989), 19-27;

Moira Goff, ‘The testament and last will of Jerome Francis Gahory’, Early Music, 38.4, (2010), 537-542;

Stephen Bernard, ‘Establishing a Publishing Dynasty: The Last Wills and Testaments of Jacob Tonson the Elder and Jacob Tonson the Younger’, The Library, 17.2 (2016), 157-166;

Julia Fernández Cuesta, ‘The Voice of the Dead: Analyzing Sociolinguistic Variation in Early Modern English Wills and Testaments’, Journal of English Linguistics, 42.4 (2014), 330-358;

Leslie Moscow McGranahan, ‘Charity and the Bequest Motive: Evidence from Seventeenth-Century Wills’, Journal of Political Economy, 108.6 (2000), 1270-1291.

Comments

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Colin

31 months ago

Score 0

Worth adding to this page the project team's interest in using Transkribus on an experimental basis to transcribe and/or key spot wills and inventories. The MarineLives project can offer ca. 100 wills with maybe 150 pages of diplomatic (or near diplomatic) transcriptions which can be matched against TNA images of those wills. The MarineLives project can also offer ca. 6 mill words of semi-diplomatic transcriptions of notarial hands from depositions made in the English High Court of Admiralty in the early/mid C17th. These two sources could both be used to train Transkribus.

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JoeSaunders

31 months ago

Score 1

Great stuff to think about here. I have a busy couple of days but will have a look at some editing of this over the weekend.

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TamsinBraisher

29 months ago

Score 0

So - checking - shall we convert the final column from "uploaded to Transkribus" (as everything is now) to a "Checking" column, and people can put who has checked which one and whether issues remain?

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Probate Registries

Contents

Background

Draft Probate project charter

Goals

Deliverables

Proposed project methodology

Proposed timeline

Required resources (people)

Required resources (technology)

Project risks

Current project (Spring 2021)

Method:

Transcription Conventions:

Sample:

Executors (the team)

Probate secondary reading

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