Welsh Journals

A NOTE ON BRECON PROBATE ACCOUNTS The procedure for proving wills in the early modern period is well-known. The will itself had to be produced by the executor(s) before the appropriate Church official. If he was satisfied with the document, he granted probate, and the executor, usually with two others, signed a bond for performance of the will's bequests. This meant not only the distribution of bequests, but the collection and payment of debts and the production of an inventory and an account of receipts and payments. These had to be submitted to the Church authority, and the survival of large numbers of bonds and inventories with wills (except in the special circumstances of the Public Record Office's collection of Canterbury wills) shows that the system was effective. The survival of accounts, however, is rare. Inventories are a favoured source for social and local historians. They are lists of the moveable goods and chattels of the deceased, including leases and mortgages of land but not (usually) freehold property. They were drawn up by two or more local men who were given a meal and payment for their work. At worst, inventories can provide us with some idea of the kind of poverty experienced by many, because, contrary to popular belief, wills were made by paupers as well as the wealthy and middling sort. At best, inventories can provide exciting insights into the history of agriculture, levels of domestic comfort, mercantile history and house-planning. Unfortunately, as Margaret Spufford has shown, an inventory is not an accurate guide to the wealth of the dead man or woman. Even the will itself may contradict, modify or supplement the inventory, since it may include property not referred to in the inventory. Theft or unofficial appropriation of legacies may have occurred between the making of the will and the writing of the inventory several days or weeks later. Books are rarely mentioned, but must often have been omitted; my own collection of the wills of priests in the archdeaconry of Cardigan is remarkable for the almost complete absence of books, of which they must have had at least a minimal number. Clothes, too, are rarely detailed. More important still, Dr Spufford has examined a number of accounts rendered by executors of wills in England. These are often flimsy scraps of paper, and this may help account for their rarity. They included funeral and sickness expenses, probate expenses, debts, rents and the costs of minor children; she concludes: there was no predictable relationship between the total value of the labourer's probate inventory and the net value at the end of his account. it was impossible to tell from the figures at the end of the inventory how any individual estate would end up. Administrators could show a substantial loss. It is obvious, therefore, that where accounts survive they are not only a valuable control, they are also an additional source of information in their own right. Amy Louise Erickson has examined a number of accounts produced by executrices, and points out: