Abstract

Robert Bearman invites us to look again at Alexander Hoghton's will of 1581 and its references to William Shakeshafte.1 The will named eleven annuitants, including Shakeshafte, and nineteen others; annuities were to be paid to eleven during natural life + lives + of longest liver of these my (here Hoghton named his thirty servants).2 When an annuitant died, his portion was to be divided equally amongst them that shall survive; and the survivor of them all was to receive [entire sum of] ?16.13s.4d. per annum originally shared by eleven annuitants. Bearman is as puzzled as I was twenty years ago by naming of nineteen servants who were not annuitants. They were placed, he says,in a very curious position. They were not responsible for payment of annuities: this task had been vested in two named trustees ... and their heirs. But they were not beneficiaries, either. Perhaps Hoghton saw their role as guarantors....' I assumed that nineteen who were not annuitants were still eligible, if one of them turned out to be longest liver of thirty, to receive annual sum of ?16.13s.4d. But my legal colleague Professor D. W. Elliott tells me:

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