1. PRO C108/132. Sarah Smyter to her brother Henry Gambier, 15 May 1717 and 12 April 1716. [BACK]

2. The time that elapsed between the date of signing a will and the date of continue

      proving it was less than a year in 78 per cent of 167 cases and less than three months in 59 per cent; Harvey (1678), introduction, A2; Gregory King thought that, on average, each person had four serious illnesses, the last one being mortal. In the same paper, he has an interesting analysis of expenditure on 'physick and chirurgery'. He thought that the nation as a whole spent just under £1/4m a year, of which 61 per cent was spent on apothecaries, 17 per cent on doctors and quacks, 13 per cent on 'kitchen physick' (i.e. self-treatment) and 9 per cent on surgeons. GLRO JB/Gregory King fo. 206. [BACK]

3. Archer (1673). [BACK]

4. Most of these books seem to have concentrated on the need for 'a steddy and regular course of living'. See, for example, Maynwaring (1683) p. 16 where he emphasized the virtue of the golden mean, not too much and not too little of sleep, meat, drink, exercise etc. Cf. Tryon (1691). [BACK]

5. Archer (1673); he was not alone in his belief in the curative virtues of tobacco; cf. Dr Everard, Panacea, or a Universal Medicine, being a discovery of the wonderful virtues of tobacco (1659); Ryder (1939) p. 196. [BACK]

6. Matthews (1978) pp. 164, 170; Brockbank (1964) pp. 2, 8; Wootton (1910) ii, 117, 143-4, 172-3, 179-82; Culpeper (1953) p. 30; all these works have a mass of fascinating material on the pharmacy of the period. For a collection of recipes designed to assist those who wished to undercut the apothecaries, see Harvey (1678). See also PRO C114/59, a daybook kept by Anthony Daffy between 1675 and 1680 which records the sales of thousands of 1/2-pint and pint bottles of the elixir to customers all over the country and as far afield as the coast of Coromandel. On the drug trade, see Roberts (1965). [BACK]

7. Brockbank (1964). [BACK]

8. Clarkson (1975) pp. 103-5; Webster quoted in Hunter & Macalpine (1963) pp. 209-10. He was actually referring to his own practice in Clitheroe, Lancashire, 'where ignorance, popery, and superstition doth much abound', but there seems little doubt that such attitudes could be found amongst middling Londoners as well, despite their veneer of sophistication. [BACK]

9. See Blauner (1966) for an interesting discussion of the problems of a society in which people often 'die with unfinished business'. [BACK]

10. A few earlier parish registers give age at death. See Figure 3 in Forbes (1976) p. 403 which shows a similar picture to the one in our figure. Finlay (1981) Ch. 5 was unable to calculate adult mortality rates by the methods of family reconstitution, since few people stayed in the same parish for long enough to provide him with data, and he was forced to match his observed infant and child mortality rates to modern life tables, a hazardous exercise as he himself admits. [BACK]

11. These are parishes which had high proportions of their householders assessed for personal estate valued over £600 in the Marriage Duties assessments of 1695, as analysed by Jones & Judges (1935) pp. 45-63. The parishes in the London Bridge group were St Andrew Hubbard, St Benet Gracechurch, St Botolph Billingsgate, St Dionis Backchurch, St Dunstan in continue

      East, St Gabriel Fenchurch, St George Botolph Lane, St Leonard Eastcheap, St Magnus, St Margaret Pattens, St Mary at Hill; and in the Guildhall group were Allhallows Bread Street, Allhallows Honey Lane, St John Evangelist, St Lawrence Jewry, St Martin Ironmonger Lane, St Mary le Bow, St Mary Magdalen Milk Street, St Matthew Friday Street, St Michael Bassishaw. Populations are taken as those provided by the assessments of 1695 for the period 1676 to 1704 and then are assumed to have changed evenly decade by decade until they reached the figures given in the 1801 census. The deaths are from the Bills of Mortality. The method used here is crude, but one is given confidence by the fact that the experience of both groups of parishes moves very much in tandem and that the larger individual parishes within the groups consistently mirror the experience of the group as a whole. One would be reluctant to put much reliance on the exact figures of deaths per thousand but can be reasonably confident that the trend is accurate. [BACK]

12. The method used was simply to collect from the Boyd data all those cases (2744) where it was possible to find a date of birth or baptism and a date of death, burial, probate or post-mortem inventory, the assumption being that any bias in Boyd's data was consistent throughout the period. It should be noted that no one should be able to enter the Boyd data unless they were already 24, the minimum age of citizenship, though in fact there are a few people in their earlier twenties. [BACK]

13. Creighton (1891) ii, 22-25, 61. The high mortality of the third quarter of the seventeenth century shows up throughout the country. Creighton thought it was due to smallpox, typhus and a particularly virulent form of influenza. [BACK]

14. Based on 43 merchants, 34 haberdashers and 16 apothecaries. See also Earle (1986) p. 55, Table 3.12. Across the whole period of the Boyd data used in Figure 11.3, the average percentage of citizens dying under 50 was 38.7 per cent but for members of 'artisan' livery companies it was 45.6 per cent and for Clothworkers and Mercers, the two companies with the wealthiest members, it was 34.4 per cent. [BACK]

15. For a development of this argument, see Earle (1986). [BACK]

16. GHMS 11892A, Michael Mitford to John Lowther, 21 December 1703, with reference to the latter's brother's funeral; Pepys, 18 March 1664, his brother Tom's funeral. On the rise of the undertaking profession, see p. 79 and Gittings (1984). [BACK]

17. S.56, 216, 239, 371. A few people were very specific about the costs of their funeral; Sir John Smith (S.65) willed that £600 be spent and John Dubois (S. 191) £400, the actual cost being just over £398. [BACK]

18. S.107; cf. S.65, Alderman Sir John Smith and S.97, Edward Darling, landlord of the Three Tuns at Charing Cross, obviously an officer in the Trained Bands who wished 'to be interred with part of my company marching before my corps'. However, very few wills do spell such things out, though some make it clear that they did not wish their funeral to be a public spectacle, e.g. Sir Nicholas Butler (S.269) who wanted 'none to be at my funeral but my owne family'. For some idea of numbers at funerals, see continue

      Pepys x, 152-3. Two city halls were needed to hold the gathering for the funeral of the goldsmith-banker Sir Thomas Vyner; 400 or 500 people attended the funeral of Anthony Joyce and 100 to 200 coaches carried Sir William Batten's mourners from London to his burial at Walthamstow. [BACK]

19. Quotations from Misson (1719) p. 90, a good description of a middling funeral, and Ryder (1939) p. 91, his grandmother's funeral. Not many people left instructions in their wills, normally restricting themselves to willing that they be buried at the discretion of the executor or 'in a decent manner'. Some specify the church and the preacher and a few are more detailed, willing that they be buried near their former wife, father, children etc. or in a particular vault. By our period, some of the City churches were getting very full. See Pepys, 18 March 1664, where he arranges for the burial of his brother Tom in the middle aisle of St Bride's Fleet Street. The gravemaker told him that it was very full but for sixpence and his father's sake he would 'justle them together' to make room for him. [BACK]

20. PRO C105/15, Hatfield v. Holmes, bill dated 13 May 1731. [BACK]

21. Ryder (1939) p. 340; S.236; S.212; PRO PROB 11/368/147 fo. 45v, will of William Sawyer; cf. S.91, 269. [BACK]

22. Misson (1719) p. 91 wrote that everyone drank two or three cups; only six bottles of wine were provided at the funeral of John Hatfield in 1731 (PRO C105/15). Pepys 18 March 1664; S.232; S.289, Mackley made a rather odd request in the codicil to his will: 'I pray let the stone that was taken out of my body be layd upon my corps while it stands in the room to show the Lord's goodness to me in sparing my life.' Readers of Pepys's diary will be familiar with his gratitude at having survived the operation for cutting for a stone. [BACK]

23. On the Custom, see Laws (1765) pp. 80-3, 99-100, 105-9 etc; Carlton (1974) pp. 45-50; for a case where it was claimed that the Custom overrode a will, see MCE 1680-1, Stockdale v. Butler; Laws (1765) p. 99 says that where an estate exceeded £2000, the widow's chamber should be £50 but this does not seem to have happened in practice. There is also confusion between the chamber and the 'widow's paraphernalia', which normally meant her jewellery. [BACK]

24. Since the sample is drawn specifically from people whose estates were divided by the Court of Orphans there is clearly a bias towards those who accepted the Custom and were quite happy to die intestate and allow its rules to govern the division of their estate. The Court of Orphans had a chequered history in our period, which caused fewer and fewer people to use its services, and a random sample of middling people would certainly have a much lower proportion of intestates. On the Court, see Carlton (1974), esp. Ch. 6. Horwitz (1984) has analysed a sample of wills made by wealthy Londoners between 1660 and 1754 and found that a high proportion did not follow the Custom of London, though this did not mean that they necessarily treated their children inequitably. Those who were least likely to follow the Custom were the elderly and/or those with relatively few surviving children, i.e. just the sort of people who were least likely to appear in our sample. break [BACK]

25. For details, see Carlton (1974) pp. 48-50. Orphanage portions were due to be paid at 21 or marriage and could be retained by widows or guardians if recognizances and sureties were found, could be lent out to third parties on the same conditions or deposited in the Chamber of London. Interest, called 'finding money', was paid to the guardian for the maintenance and education of the children. The City government regularly borrowed money from the orphans' fund in the Chamber and, when the City went bankrupt in 1682, the orphans were the main losers, a scandal which naturally made the whole system very much less attractive to executors and testators. The orphans' rights were eventually secured by new taxes on coal and, although the numbers of people using the Court declined quite rapidly from the 1680s, there were still sufficient to maintain our sample up to 1720. After this date, there are very few and the Custom of London itself was abolished in 1725. See Carlton (1974) Ch. 6 and Kellett (1963). [BACK]

26. About 25 per cent received nothing from the dead man's share, often because they were given a life interest in real property. [BACK]

27. Wills are very complicated to analyse. A coding system was devised for personal estate as follows: a) equal division between all children—64 per cent; b) eldest son more than the rest—13 per cent; c) son(s) more than daughter(s)—9 per cent; d) eldest of either sex more than younger—9 per cent; e) daughter(s) more than son(s)—4 per cent; f) younger children more than older—1 per cent. For real estate the raw figures were: a) to sons but only had sons—4; b) to eldest son only—21; c) to eldest sons only—7; d) to sons, nothing to daughters—13; e) to sons and daughters—13; f) to daughters but only had daughters—5; g) not left to children—7; h) sold and added to personal estate—6. [BACK]

28. Of those who died testate and left a widow, 21.3 per cent appointed her sole executrix with no overseers, 56.7 per cent appointed her joint-executrix or sole executrix with one or more overseers and 22 per cent did not name her at all. [BACK]

29. Two-thirds of wills mention legacies apart from what was left to widows and children: 73 testators (40.3 per cent) named 1-5 legatees; 32 (17.7 per cent) named 6-10; 13 (7.2 per cent) named 11-20 and 3 (1.7 per cent) named over 20, the greatest number being the 72 named by John Hobby (S.91 and see p. 318). Mourning bequests are also mentioned in 57 per cent of wills, the recipients showing similar patterns to those in Table 11.3 but most wills only name a small proportion of those who received cloth, gloves, rings etc. and that much of the distribution was left to the discretion of executors. [BACK]

30. See Jordan (1960). [BACK]

31. S.56 (0.2 per cent of his net estate). Altogether, 50 testators left 97 separate bequests to the poor worth a total capital value of £5242, 10 left 11 bequests for religious purposes worth £484, 4 left 6 bequests for education worth £273, 3 left 4 bequests to help with apprenticeship premiums or give loans to young beginners worth £1318 and 3 left 1 bequest each for poor prisoners worth a total of £1055. Miscellaneous bequests worth £400 were also left to the Artillery Company, Bedlam Hospital, the Salters' Company and 'charity'. break [BACK]

32. S.42, S.91. [BACK]

33. For a general work on charity after 1660, see Owen (1964) pp. 11-88. [BACK]

34. S. 191 (Dubois); S.289 (Mackley); cf. S.12, Richard Darnelly, who willed that 'four ministers of God's word' should be at his funeral; S. 13, Richard Bridges, who willed that the 8th and 9th verses of Psalm 16 should be the text at his funeral sermon, and several others with such hints of piety or the nature of their belief, e.g. S.96 who left £2 to 'a poor pious nonconforming minister' to be chosen after consultation with the minister of his own congregation. [BACK]

35. S.340 (Ragdale); S.193 (Waldron). [BACK]

36. S.136; S.246; S.12; S.86. [BACK]

37. S.4; S.354; S.49, cf. S.91—£2 to all those servants 'who shall live a year after with my wife'. [BACK]

38. Reduction or voiding of widows' legacies on remarriage in S.14, 31, 67, 152, 365; new arrangements for children in S.5, 30, 187, 208, 231 etc. [BACK]

39. S. 12, cf. 116 and 216 and see p. 235; S.285; S.82; S.303; S.307; for some comments in wills relating to daughters' marriages, see pp. 187-8. [BACK]

40. S.4. [BACK]

41. S.71; for an insight into just how much religious belief could affect behaviour and lifestyle, see Seaver (1985). [BACK]