Probate Records: A Source for Folk Life Studies

Abstract

Prior to the advent of Government reports, and the increase in literacy among the common people in the nineteenth century, there is a dearth of documentary material facing the social historian in England and Wales. While there are many chance records of farming practices, social conditions and the like dotted here and there among such accumulations as estate records and court rolls from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is not common to find a corpus of material from which a general picture of any aspect of folk life can be drawn. One source, however, stands out because of the abundance of detailed material referring directly to the organization and economics of farming, crafts and domestic life - namely the huge number of wills, many with associated inventories of goods, preserved by the various probate courts. Despite - or perhaps because of - the sheer number of records preserved, they have, generally speaking, only recently been used in anything approaching a scientific manner. As they come to be systematically examined, area by area and period by period, we can expect to achieve a much deeper understanding of the standard of living of the ordinary people in the period between the age of Elizabeth and the early nineteenth century. It is the aim of this article to suggest a few ways in which an analysis of a collection of these records can provide sounder evidence than previously available for an understanding of various aspects of folk life.