At http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~oel/unsolved50.html are two inventories for a husband and then his wife who died a year later. Each heading has been given a number according to its position in the inventory. The heading numbers for Henry go down the page 1 - 13 but Mary's dodges around a bit where I have to tried to match them with Henry's. The question is do these inventories apply to the same house? They don't seem to but I'd be grateful for the views of others. Henry was lord of the manor of Elmsted his father having bought it in 1634. Court documents relating to this manor are rare but some exist for the late 1400s and in the inventory for Mary is a debt due for a quit rent. ~~ Keith Griffiths Elmsted, Kent

Do you also have wills for these two people? Did Henry have debts listed or even just mentioned? There seem to be similar rooms "downstairs" which would lead me to suspect that it could be the same house. Although one of the appraisers was the same, he was not accompanied by the same partner and so different things could be spotted. People do rearrange things and a year has passed in which debts may have made it necessary to sell some things. In addition to that, if Henry's will bequeathed some of his possessions then they would have not figured in his widow's inventory taken a year later. If you are lucky enough to have a will to go with either or both of these inventories, then reading them together with the inventories could prove helpful. Can you identify another dwelling that the widow may have occupied - one that had a hall. If she were in poorer circumstances and was existing on her dower alone, then one would expect her to have moved to either a house provided for that purpose or one that she could afford to live in. However, the similarities of room descriptions makes it more likely that it was the same house but one that had been subject to provisions of a will and had "seen life" for a year, so making it likely that items would be bought and sold over that period. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Griffiths" <griffiths370@btinternet.com> To: "Old English mailing list" <OLD-ENGLISH@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 7:14 AM Subject: [OEL] Two inventories - are they for the same house or a differenthouse > At > > http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~oel/unsolved50.html > > are two inventories for a husband and then his wife who died a year later. > > Each heading has been given a number according to its position in the > inventory. The heading numbers for Henry go down the page 1 - 13 but > Mary's > dodges around a bit where I have to tried to match them with Henry's. > > The question is do these inventories apply to the same house? > > They don't seem to but I'd be grateful for the views of others. > > Henry was lord of the manor of Elmsted his father having bought it in > 1634. > Court documents relating to this manor are rare but some exist for the > late > 1400s and in the inventory for Mary is a debt due for a quit rent. > ~~ > Keith Griffiths > Elmsted, Kent > > > > ==================================== > WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ > ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > -- > Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: - Release Date: <unknown> > >

<<... two inventories for a husband and then his wife who died a year later. Each heading has been given a number according to its position in the inventory. The heading numbers for Henry go down the page 1 - 13 but Mary's dodges around a bit where I have to tried to match them with Henry's. The question is do these inventories apply to the same house? They don't seem to but I'd be grateful for the views of others.>> I agree with Audrey, Keith - I'd say they're the same house. The widow's Chamber over the Parlour is probably what was called the Green Chamber in her husband's inventory, while the widow's first Buttery is probably the same as the husband's Larder. That leaves only the Beer Buttery and the Men's' Chamber as differences between the two inventories. The Beer Buttery, just a little office or outbuilding, is too small a difference to be significant - there were clearly other outbuildings which haven't been listed by name (and anyway the husband's Larder may have been a two-room affair equating to both of the widow's Butteries). The absence of the Men's' Chamber is a bit more odd, but perhaps it just didn't contain any of the widow's goods (maybe it contained nothing but male servants and their personal property, or some adult male who was running the farm for the widow, or maybe it was occupied by the nephew and heir Richard or some other relative - did the husband's will confer a right of habitation on anyone?). Incidentally, it was common to store wool and grain and minor agricultural implements in the first floor sleeping chambers of a house (note the reference to 'wheat in the house' in the widow's inventory), so it may well be that the first two or four items under 'Outdoors B from 12 above' in the husband's inventory were in fact stored in the Men's Chamber where they were listed (incidentally the Men's and Maidens' Chambers would probably have been where the male and female servants in husbandry slept). I think the items listed under the Hall in the husband's inventory, which you speculate ought to have belonged to the Kitchen, probably were in fact in the Hall. At that time the hall was often still the largest room in the house and was its main living and eating room. It was sometimes even still used for cooking. It looks as though in these inventories the word 'kitchen' described a brewhouse. It's interesting to see how the husband's inventory, made in the autumn, lists a great deal of grain and other harvested crops, but that the widow's inventory, made in the summer before the harvest, does not. Comparing these two inventories would be a useful exercise for students - may I download them and use them for that purpose, Keith? Matt Tompkins