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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Davedrave on Tuesday 01 January 19 08:59 GMT (UK)
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I have come across two earlier C16th wills which make bequests to two churches, in adjoining parishes. I know that some of my farming forbears paid tithes to more than one rector in the 1840’s because their fields, rented from one landlord, lay in two parishes. What I am wondering is if anyone knows whether it was a common practice in the C16th to leave bequests to those parishes in which a farmer’s land lay? Geographically this would make sense in the case of these wills, but it might, I suppose also be explained by a direct family connection (i.e. might one of the churches have been a place of baptism, for example?).
Dave
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It was common with people who had a bit of disposable income to make bequests to the Church. It may be to say a prayer on the anniversary of the death or ring the bell.
Sometimes the bequests included live stock.
I think (particularly before the dissolution of the Monasteries) it was considered something of an insurance policy against eternity in Purgatory.
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Thanks jim1. Yes, one of these wills leaves a ewe and lamb to the church. I suppose that even though the bequests were left for the reasons you suggest the geographical location of the churches probably ties in with the likely location of the testators’ farms.
Dave :)
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I have this in my husband's family. The man died in the year 1500; in his Will he left money to all the Churches in the parishes in which he later went on to state that he owned land.