From the will of Robert Hesketh of Rufford, Lancs., Esq., 1620: "Itm. yt is not my will that any blacks shall be given but unto my sonnes and daughters but I would have the poore people to have Clokes and gownes to pray for mee." Would this be mourning, i.e. black clothes? I haven't seen this wording before. And how about the cloaks and gowns to be given to the poor to pray for him? Was this customary? Thanks, Alejandro Milberg Boston, Mass.

Alejandro If you were relatively well off you might give money to poor people who were to mourn you, this could be financial and/or clothing. Blacks is presumably the mourning cloths, as you said. If you look at the wills of richer people you get vast amounts of black cloth distributed, it was one of the most expensive parts of the funeral expenses for an aristocrat for example. Was this man a catholic? Having people to pray for you has echoes of the catholic belief in purgatory, where the more prays were said for you after you had died, the faster you got through purgatory ... So before the Reformation most middling sort and gentry wills will have money to priests to say masses, and for people to pray for the individual. This belief vanished as an official one with the Church of England - so perhaps he is either catholic or old fashioned. I sometimes suspect that some will makers copy phrases out of their parents' wills ... Lyn B

I have found in the wills that I have read for the 17th century that, even though the catholic religion was no longer practiced, people were still following a number of the rituals in one way or another. There seem to be a number of requests for priests to say masses or prayers or similar and we have to remember that these wills would have to go to the diocesan office to be proved and so the authorities of the Anglican church would read them. If they hadn't gone to the diocesan office, then they wouldn't now be available for us to peruse. Presumably the reformed church was still following a number of practices of the previous "unreformed" church. It was said by someone that Henry VIII remained a catholic until the day he died. Evolution is generally a slow process. Rituals attached to death and mourning persisted for a very long time, as witness the practice of buying mourning rings for a large number of people any time from the early 18th up and into the 19th century. I realise that Queen Victoria most likely resurrected mourning rituals, as well as possibly creating a few of her own, but the jet industry of Witby was built upon the production of mourning jewelry in the 19th century. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lyn Boothman" <annys@boothman27.fsnet.co.uk> To: <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 12:08 AM Subject: RE: [OEL] Blacks? > Alejandro > > If you were relatively well off you might give money to poor people who were > to mourn you, this could be financial and/or clothing. Blacks is presumably > the mourning cloths, as you said. If you look at the wills of richer people > you get vast amounts of black cloth distributed, it was one of the most > expensive parts of the funeral expenses for an aristocrat for example. > > Was this man a catholic? Having people to pray for you has echoes of the > catholic belief in purgatory, where the more prays were said for you after > you had died, the faster you got through purgatory ... So before the > Reformation most middling sort and gentry wills will have money to priests > to say masses, and for people to pray for the individual. This belief > vanished as an official one with the Church of England - so perhaps he is > either catholic or old fashioned. I sometimes suspect that some will makers > copy phrases out of their parents' wills ... Lyn B > > > > > > ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== > Going away for a while? > Don't forget to UNSUBSCRIBE! > OLD-ENGLISH-L-request@rootsweb.com > >

Audrey I suspect that this is something else that varies around the country, and presumably different dioceses took different views and accepted different things. I have read all the wills that exist in the obvious archives for one Suffolk parish, some 700+, and there are big differences pre and post the 1560s. Before that of course you get the changes at the end of Henry's reign then Edward then Mary, so it's all very confusing in relation to what you could say, and what you could say when you wrote your will if that was a while before you died. What comes out in that one parish is that the giving to the poor as a regular thing disappears over 20 years or so; it keeps going longest amongst the gentry and a few yeomen families. There is only one reference to being prayed for after 1560, and he is definitely a Catholic, and no references to having masses said by priests or being prayed for by priests - this is protestant East Anglia of course. Rituals of death and mourning of course continue, but the practice of having masses said or being prayed for to get you through purgatory quicker is something else. Lyn B

Hi Lyn Yes, I do agree. Wills for my parish don't start until 1536 and then are quite sparse (I think there is just one for 1536) so I haven't the advantages of comparison that you do. Do you have sermons being said, instead of the prayers and mass? Mass was extremely uncommon and I think these could well be catholic testators but prayers were a different matter. This seems to have been not uncommon here. Giving to the poor does seem to be the province of the better off and the scale of charitable giving varies in the same way. It never fails to amaze me how different the dioceses are in the way they recorded their probate documents and also the amount of material that survives for the different parishes. I am quite envious of those that have registers that go back into the 1500s. Mine start around 1620 as do the ones for Stockport. There is a whole aspect of history that is missing for our parishes that has clearly survived for others. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lyn Boothman" <annys@boothman27.fsnet.co.uk> To: "'norman.lee1'" <norman.lee1@virgin.net>; <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 8:14 PM Subject: RE: [OEL] Blacks? Audrey I suspect that this is something else that varies around the country, and presumably different dioceses took different views and accepted different things. I have read all the wills that exist in the obvious archives for one Suffolk parish, some 700+, and there are big differences pre and post the 1560s. Before that of course you get the changes at the end of Henry's reign then Edward then Mary, so it's all very confusing in relation to what you could say, and what you could say when you wrote your will if that was a while before you died. What comes out in that one parish is that the giving to the poor as a regular thing disappears over 20 years or so; it keeps going longest amongst the gentry and a few yeomen families. There is only one reference to being prayed for after 1560, and he is definitely a Catholic, and no references to having masses said by priests or being prayed for by priests - this is protestant East Anglia of course. Rituals of death and mourning of course continue, but the practice of having masses said or being prayed for to get you through purgatory quicker is something else. Lyn B

In message <13e.4752d2b.2ea98a23@aol.com>, AMilb36287@aol.com writes >>From the will of Robert Hesketh of Rufford, Lancs., Esq., 1620: > >"Itm. yt is not my will that any blacks >shall be given but unto my sonnes and daughters but I would >have the poore people to have Clokes and gownes to pray for >mee." > >Would this be mourning, i.e. black clothes? Yes - often wills made specific provision for mourning clothing 0 which widows were supposed to wear for a year, other kin for at least 6 months, preferably more. In this case, only the sons and daughter are to get mourning, noit brothers and sisters, servants and more distant kin and friends, who sometimes got it. >I haven't seen this wording >before. And how about the cloaks and gowns to be given to the poor to pray for >him? >Was this customary? Yes - it was the duty of a wealthy man to give charity to the poor, and this was a very practical form of it, worth having. And it would ensure a good turn out for the funeral/ Often gifts were left in money or (usually) kind, for the poor at the funeral, and at the month's mind, a month later, and the year's mind. This meant several people would be saying nice things and praying for his soul for some while to come. Early C16 wills may add a trenatll of masses to be said by a priest. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society