Dear all, Does anyone have an idea of what age you would need to be to witness a document in November 1596? My group of researching cousins have a document dealing with a contested lease of Bidston Manor, Wirral. We're interested in one of the witnesses, Stephen Fells, but I'm wondering what would be the youngest age he would have been allowed to put his name to it? What was considered to be the age of 'maturity' in this time-frame? Kind regards, Yvonne

Just catching up with emails - I've never seen anything definative but I've certainly seen people I know to be under 21 witness documents, and also made trustees as well in a couple of cases. Lyn B

There are various ages for different things when it comes to being a witness and being of age. A.J. Camp's book is fairly old now but very useful in describing these things. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lyn Boothman" <[email protected]> To: "'Yvonne Purdy'" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 8:58 PM Subject: Re: [OEL] Age to be a witness > Just catching up with emails - I've never seen anything definative but > I've > certainly seen people I know to be under 21 witness documents, and also > made > trustees as well in a couple of cases. Lyn B > > > > > > > > ==================================== > 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 > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >