Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T04:57:51.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Family, Kin and Community in Eight Lincolnshire Parishes, 1567–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

J.A. Johnston
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The purpose of this study is to examine the changing proportions of bequests made by the inhabitants of eight Lincolnshire parishes to various categories of heirs between 1567 and 1800. Six of the parishes are located in the clay vale of western Lincolnshire, the other two are on the fen edge in the south of the county. There are 1,442 wills from these parishes which made 10,763 bequests. These bequests can be divided into three categories, those made to the immediate family, those made to kin and those made to unrelated people who must represent the community in which the deceased had lived. The share each of these categories enjoyed changed significantly in the period. By the eighteenth century the immediate family had become predominant and, apparently, the community occupied a less important place in the social environment of the will makers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , October 1995 , pp. 179 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Obelkevich, James, Religion and Rural Society (Oxford, 1976), pp. 23–102.Google Scholar

2 McIntosh, Marjorie K., A Community Transformed, the Manor and Liberty of Havering 1500–1620 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 78, 85–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nair, G., Highley: The Development of a Community (Oxford, 1988), pp. 66–9, 155–158Google Scholar; Howell, C., Land, Family and Inheritance in Transition, Kibworth Harcourt 1280–1700 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 254–8Google Scholar; MacFarlane, A., ‘The Myth of the Peasantry: Family and Economy in a Northern Parish’, in Land Kinship and Life Cycle, ed. Smith, R.M. (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 335–44Google Scholar; K. Wrightson, ‘Kinship in an English Village 1550–1770’, in ibid., pp. 313–32; Wrightson, K. and Levine, D., Poverty and Piety in an English Village, Terling 1525–1700 (London, 1979), pp. 91–102Google Scholar; Spufford, M., ‘Peasant Inheritance Customs and Land Distribution in Cambridgeshire from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries’, in Goody, J., Thirsk, J. and Thompson, E.P. (eds), Family and Inheritance. Rural Society in Western Europe 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 173–6.Google Scholar

3 Cressy, D., ‘Kinship and Kin Interaction in Early Modern England’, Past and Present 113 (1986), 38–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 The issues and problems of community study are well surveyed in The English Rural Community ed. Short, Brian (Cambridge, 1992).Google Scholar

5 Thirsk, J. (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales 4 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 9Google Scholar; Macfarlane, , ‘Myth of the Peasantry’ pp. 344–7.Google Scholar

6 Vann, R.T., ‘Wills and the Family in an English Town: Banbury, 1550–1800’, Journal of Family History 4 (1979), 363–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Coster, W., Kinship and Inheritance in Early Modern England: Three Yorkshire Parishes, Borthwick Papers No.83 (University of York, 1993).Google Scholar

8 Thirsk, J., English Peasant Farming (London, 1957)Google Scholar, chapters 4 and 8 for clay land, chapters 2 and 5 for the fens.

9 Lincolnshire Archive Office (hereafter L.A.O.), Lincoln Consistory Court Wills (hereafter L.C.C. Wills) 1599/193,1607/1/94,1751/155.

10 L.A O. L.C.C. Wills 1585/2/172; 1597/78.

11 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1597/298; 1632/402.

12 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1586/253; 1589/231; 1634/1/217; 1665/371

13 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1569/1/124; 1599/236; 1661/865.

14 L.A O. L.C.C. Wills 1618/2/374; 1632/402.

15 L..A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1597/227,1636/420.

16 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1719/2/133.

17 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1693/103; 1697/35; 1701–4/88; 1709/1/99.

18 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1793 John Hutchinson.

19 Wrigley, E.A. and Schofield, R.S., The Population History of England 1541–1871 (London, 1981) pp. 258–9.Google Scholar

20 L.A O. L.C.C. Wills 1591/1/315; 1677/226.

21 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1613/664; L.A.O. Inv. 133/536.

22 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1734/188.

23 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1708/113.

24 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1660/132.

25 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1762 William Cook.

26 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1583/2/283; 1591/2/186; 1680/1/331; 1681/449; 1704/282; 1719/2/256.

27 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1597/298; 1699–1700/2/84; 1674/27.

28 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1779/7.

29 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1767 Thomas Clark (his will was made in 1759); 1796 Elizabeth Clark.

30 Gough, R., History of Myddle (Fontwell, Sussex), p. 49.Google Scholar

31 Prior, M., ‘Wives and Wills 1558–1700’ in Chartres, J. and Hey, D. (eds.), English Rural Society 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 212.Google Scholar

32 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1614/1/52; 1719/1/89; 1726/90.

33 L.A O. L.C.C. Wills 1721/1/138; 1779 Elizabeth Brown.

34 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1726/90.

35 There is ambiguity in the wills for the entire period in that son and daughter in law can mean either step children or the relationship as we define it today. Both however count as kin in the percentages of table, 2.

36 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1616/132.

37 Houlbrooke, R.A., The English Family 1450–1700 (London, 1984), pp. 1–15.Google Scholar

38 Johnston, J.A., ‘17th Century Agricultural Practice in Six Lincolnshire Parishes’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 18 (1983), 8–10.Google Scholar

39 L.A.O. Misc. Dep. 264/i and ii.

40 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1576/94; 1622/2/120.

41 In the clay vale parishes books were appraised in 0.77 per cent of probate inventories between 1567 and 1600 and 6.1 per cent between 1601 and 1633, with figures of 4.1 per cent and 5 per cent on the fen edge.

42 See below

43 L.A O. Vj 1608, Vj 1636. Presentments concerning marital and moral transgressions made up 24.7 per cent of the total cases in 1608 and 26.1 per cent in 1636. Those which dealt with overt instances of doctrinal non-conformity were 19 per cent in 1608 and 17.9 per cent in 1636.

44 Ingram, M., Church Courts. Sex and Marriage in England 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 70–1; 125–132.Google Scholar

45 Johnston, J.A., ‘Social Change in the Eighteenth Century: The Evidence from Six Lincolnshire Parishes 1661–1812’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 27 (1992), 27–33.Google Scholar

46 Obelkevich, , Religion and Rural Society, pp. 23–7.Google Scholar

47 Stone, , Family. Sex and Marriage, pp. 7–8; 221–68.Google Scholar

48 L.A.O. L.C.C. Wills 1566/109.

49 L.A O. L.C.C. Wills 1578/88; see Gittings, C., Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London, 1984), p. 54.Google Scholar

50 Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (Yale, 1992), p. 505.Google Scholar

51 Holmes, Clive, Seventeenth Century Lincolnshire, (History of Lincolnshire Volume 7, Lincoln 1980), pp. 159–76.Google Scholar

52 Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population History, pp. 216–17; 443.Google Scholar