Agricultural History Review, Volume 69 Part 1 (2021), p. 148

This collection publishes all the surviving wills, inventories and probate accounts dating from 1651–1675 for Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth, the two parishes that made up early modern Sunderland. It follows on from an edition of Sunderland’s probate documents dating from 1601 to 1650 which was published in 2010, and continues the story of the development of the town and port which by 1665 had a population of c.3370. The present volume contains the probate documents of 119 people, mostly preserved at Durham, but also in the National Archives and at York. These are presented with an introduction, a glossary, name index and subject index. The glossary is necessary given many obscure spellings and local terms found in the documents; and the subject index is particularly welcome, providing a time-saving shortcut for researchers interested in particular topics such as objects, rooms and occupations.

Comparing the society and economy documented in this volume with the edition on the first half of the century provides a striking contrast. Gone is the predominantly agricultural society and instead the documents portray a thriving centre of trade, fully involved in the political, religious and economic changes of the time. Among the individuals represented we find George Lilburne, the uncle of the leveller John Lilburne; Peter Greene, the purser of HMS Resolution, a ship lost in the Second Dutch War; and George Humble, a Quaker imprisoned for beliefs who died in gaol. The economic transformation can be crudely measured by changes in occupations: a quick analysis shows that in 1601–1650, 27 per cent of those leaving wills and inventories were yeomen and only 4 per cent had maritime occupations; by the 1651–75 period yeomen had fallen to 14 per cent and those with maritime occupations including shipbuilding had risen to 24 per cent. Crafts and trade had increased in importance too, while levels of wealth had risen noticeably.

The documents reproduced are full of interest and variety. Probate documents provide glimpses into the houses and families of people who otherwise left little or no record of their lives. Thus, for instance, the will of William Kell, a shipwright who died in 1658, survives along with a detailed probate account. He failed to appoint an executor but left his wife £100 and the residue of his wealth to his siblings. The church courts appointed his wife, Alice Kell, as administrator of his estate, and the probate account she produced goes to great lengths to prove nothing was left after his debts and her £100 legacy were paid. The account itemizes even the most trivial of his goods and assigned them values down to the last half penny in a list that ran to three pages. Only 13 out of over 200 items listed were worth more than £1. As a consequence, things which many inventories summarize as ‘old lumber’ or ‘unseen things’ are described in detail. John Pearson, a gentleman who died in 1668 left a nuncupative will and an inventory. He left all his ‘goods and chattels whatsoever, as well real as personal’ to his wife, Elizabeth, ‘who hath proved a loving and kind wife to me. And, seeing I got my means by her, I am unwilling to leave her worse than I found her’. He then refused to leave anything to his father, mother, brother or sisters. The inventory records a new brewhouse, £3 worth of strong beer, and malt and hops worth £10, as the only evidence of an occupation, and one that could well have been conducted by his wife.

Within the collection you will find the inventories of female farmers, merchants of imported goods, impoverished seamen, and investors in ships and coal-mines. Many of the documents are quite quirky, defying normal rules of probate: a number of inventories merge into accounts listing debts paid and funeral costs; others list the value of real property; some list no household goods. As such, this collection demonstrates the value of probate documents to historians: not just local historians and historians of the family but all those interested material culture and social and economic change, and provides an important resource for teachers, students and researchers.