Bequests to widows and their property in early modern England

Abstract

This paper analyses those wills made by persons with the surname Farrer between 1500 and 1849 that mention both a widow and children in order to see how different testators divided their property when the interests of more than one family member had to be considered. It is argued that the economic position of women following widowhood was weaker in the eighteenth century than it had been earlier. In the eighteenth century, fewer widows were appointed executrix of their husband's estate and fewer received a share of the residue of the estate. Relatively more bequests of houses and land went to children and not to the widow. These trends occurred in all regions we examined and were experienced by all social groups who made wills. However, while husbands in the eighteenth century were relatively less generous to their widows in their wills than their predecessors, their widows were far from destitute, often receiving some land, cash and goods in addition to a house.

Notes

1 It is not therefore surprising that the will-making population often constitutes a small percentage of all adults listed in the burial register, for example just 10 and 14% respectively in Botelho's study of the two Suffolk parishes, Cratfield and Poslingford, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Botelho, 2002, p. 62, note 7). Taking into account Botelho's estimates of the number of families in each parish wealthy enough to make a will, these percentages would rise to 14% in Cratfield and to 35% in the much poorer Poslingford. Bonfield (1986, p. 166) reports higher proportions for male testators (ranging between 26 and 60% for Orwell and Willingham in Cambridgeshire and Terling in Essex, again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

2 A point made by Ottaway (2004, p. 118) although she felt that the wills she had analysed provided sufficient detail on bequests to widows to clarify whether custom had been followed.

3 Further adjustments became possible when a widow made her will, adjustments which might also take account of any change in the circumstances of the various heirs since her husband's death.

4 Wills made before 1500 were not analysed in the present study as it was considered that there were too few to establish the pattern of bequests.

5 Their share of the total declined slowly before 1700 but then recovered only to decline again after 1800, a period for which few wills and administrations were collected.

6 Division of the will-making population into ever smaller sub-groups can result in a population base that is too small for effective study.

7 The particular micro-simulation programme that has been used in this case is CAMSIM, constructed by Jim Oeppen of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock and it is Jim Oeppen who has written the programmes which generated the details on widowhood that we summarise and interpret below. In the context of the present paper the micro-simulation has been used only to simulate the pattern of widowhood in the English past. One reason for this is that in the case of England there is exceptionally little empirical data on the history of widowhood in comparison for example with the data available for other parts of Europe, notably Scandinavia, with the first English national census to detail the age and marital status of the population being carried out in 1851. Another reason for applying the micro-simulation to the experience of widowhood in the English past in the first instance is that the demography which underpins it is based essentially on completed analyses of 28 family reconstitutions (Wrigley, Davies, Oeppen & Schofield, 1997). In theory, however, the micro-simulation could be applied to any historical population for which reliable data of its demographic past are available.

8 This confirms the inference that could be made from comparing the percentages of widows serving as executrixes in the eighteenth century reported by Ottaway (2004, 136) in three parishes with Erickson's account of the percentage chosen as executrixes in different areas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Erickson (1993, 158).

9 Examples of classifications on these lines can be found in Botelho (2002, 63) and in Ottaway

9 (2004, 139). The classification by Ottaway differs from that of Botelho in certain details, grouping some types of provision for widows kept separate by Botelho while distinguishing others that Botelho had grouped. Ottaway also includes the further (but seldom used) categories of no specific bequest to the widow but with the widow nominated as executor or trustee, and confirmation of a marriage settlement.

10 Another option considered, but not eventually pursued to avoid over complicating the classification, was to distinguish between bequests of household items and tools.

11 The definition of what constituted a token bequest is inevitably arbitrary but typically involved the bequest of an item of furniture, clothing or one animal. To include all such bequests alongside other major bequests would have given an exaggerated impression of the extent to which estates were fragmented.

12 Tables 7–9 which appear below make clear that relatively few persons other than children received gifts of cash, goods or the residue. Phrasing in the text reflects this, and it should be understood that in this context references to ‘bequests to children’ include bequests to a small number of other persons.

13 Wills made after 1800 have been included in Table 3 for the sake of completeness (and in many other tables) but do not feature in the analysis because of the small number of wills available. Table 3 also shows a much higher proportion of children receiving houses or lands in wills made before 1550. This may reflect the fact that wills which survive from this period include more wealthy testators (although this is not what is indicated by the social composition of the testators in Appendix 4.6, only just over a fifth of wills from the period 1500–1549 give any indication of the social status of the testator). Whittle (1998, p. 53) has noted a decline from 80 to 64% between the fifteenth and mid sixteenth centuries in the percentage of widows bequeathed land in six Norfolk parishes.

14 The increase in the percentage of children receiving a share of the residue may help account for the lower percentage of children in the eighteenth century who received household and other goods. In theory it would seem possible that the residue of an estate might also involve houses and land (if not otherwise designated as specific bequests) but the opinion of Lloyd Bonfield who has studied English inheritance patterns in detail was that testators would be unlikely to fail to specify in their wills any land and houses which they wished to bequeath to a particular individual.

15 The decline in the percentage of widows selected as the only person to receive the residue of the estate (in addition to a house) is offset in part by the higher proportions of widows in the eighteenth century receiving bequests of cash and goods. However, there is further confirmation of a weakening of the economic position of the widow after 1650 in the lower proportions of this group of widows receiving either goods or at least a share of the residue of the estate.

16 All wills that specified respectively bequests of cash, goods or the residue have been used in this analysis (of those wills that mentioned both a widow and children). The data sets are larger therefore than those used to produce which were restricted to bequests of land and houses and suggest different frequencies of receipt by widows and children of bequests of different types.

17 Some of these widows may have received a cash bequest in lieu of a share of the residue. However about a third of the widows who received a cash bequest in the eighteenth century also received at least a share of the residue of the estate.

18 Until 1700 there had been a steady increase in the number of wills mentioning daughters as recipients of the residue of the estate relative to the number favouring sons, but the trend then reversed.

19 See note 12.

20 For example, note the number of wills available for the status groups analysed by Botelho (2002, p. 69).

21 Lloyd Bonfield, personal communication.

22 Yeomen and farmers in the first half of the eighteenth century constitute an exception.

23 Percentages for other regions have again been disregarded in making these regional comparisons as they are based on too few wills.

24 On the issue of the significance of chronological variation it is important to note that Erickson only presents data for different places at different dates.

25 The data set also includes some non-Europeans whose name when anglicised bore a certain resemblance to Farrer.

26 This would seem to be the implication of a study of will makers in the late twentieth century British population which showed that the men and women who made wills were older at death than other persons, see Finch et al. (1996, p. 52).

27 Wills of this type are termed by Finch et al. ‘composite wills’ as opposed to wills that leave all property (undifferentiated) to usually one but sometimes more than one beneficiary. These wills they have called ‘total estate wills’ (Finch et al., 1996, p. 83). The terms have the potential to confuse and have not been applied in the present study.

28 However, included in the two thirds are some wills where no children were mentioned as beneficiaries.