When Death Do Us Part Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England

The seventeen essays contained in this volume provide insight into the probate records of early modern England, focusing on three principal sources: wills, inventories, and accounts. With its emphasis upon method, approach, and interpretation, demonstrated through both general discussions and a range of case studies, this reference will be of value to a wide audience, including academics and students, as well as local and family historians enagaged in the investigation of communities in England.

Tom Arkell is a specialist on sources for the history of population and social structure in early modern England. He has published extensively in this area, including articles in Social History, Local Population Studies and the Economic History Review, and is co-editor of, and contributor to, Surveying the people: the interpretation and use of document sources for the study of population in the later seventeenth century (Oxford, 1992).Nesta Evans has worked extensively on probate documents as a researcher and research assistant over many years, and has recently contributed to the Hearth Tax Project led by Professor Margaret Spufford. Her publications include The East Anglian linen industry: rural industry and local economy (Aldershot, 1985); Wills of the archdeaconry of Sudbury, 1630-38, 2 vols (Woodbridge, 1987/1993); The Cambridgeshire Hearth Tax Returns, British Record Society (London, 2000) (with Susan Rose).Nigel Goose is Professor of Social and Economic History at the University of Hertfordshire. He is a leading economic, social and demographic historian of early modern England, and has published extensively in this field, including articles in the Economic History Review, Urban History, Social History, Local Population Studies, Southern History and Continuity and Change. He is co-editor of, and contributor to, Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Brighton, 2005), and has also published two books and several articles on the social, economic and demographic history of nineteenth-century Hertfordshire. He is editor of the journal Local Population Studies, General Editor of Studies in Regional and Local History (University of Hertfordshire Press), a member of Council of the Economic History Society and of the Committee of the Social History Society (UK).