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Archiver > OLD-ENGLISH > 2007-04 > 1176228902


From: "norman lee" <>
Subject: Re: [OEL] Heir not mentioned in will
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:15:02 +0100
References: <93EC899E92A38749B4B93AC4319D25B60C3D8277@Saffron.cfs.le.ac.uk>


I think this could be further confused by what they called chattel land
which seems to have been cottages with small holdings. However, since a
number of wills or bonds of administration were of men who only leased from
the lord of the manor, some holdings could be that small but represented all
that the testator held in the way of land. These were still classified as
chattel land, or so I have been told.

Audrey

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tompkins, M.L.L." <>
To: <>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: [OEL] Heir not mentioned in will


> <<Does the difference between a will and a testament have anything to do
> with this? I seem to remember that a will demised land and a testament
> disposed all the rest of the property. The fact that most wills also
> included the testament (generally says "last will and testament of X")
> tends to muddy the waters.>>
>
>
> That's a good question, Audrey - I wondered about that myself. My
> thesis said:
>
> "It is unlikely that these testators [the ones who didn't devise their
> land in their wills] were following the medieval custom of creating two
> documents, a testament dealing with their personalty, which required to
> be proved in the ecclesiastical probate courts, and a will dealing with
> their real property, which was no business of the probate courts and
> seldom survives. By the middle of the sixteenth century it had become
> normal to combine the two documents into a single last will and
> testament, and the fact that a third of the Great Horwood wills (which
> were mostly proved in the Archdeacon of Buckingham's probate court) did
> include devises of land suggests that this was the normal practice
> there.
>
> Nevertheless it is clear that the old attitude that testaments should
> not normally deal with land still influenced testators' habits. Not
> only did almost none of the testators mention in their will land which
> they wished to pass to their heir at law - because it was legally
> unnecessary - but even those who wished to devise land to someone other
> than the heir at law seldom used their will to achieve this end. They
> used a deathbed surrender instead (or made provision in advance of death
> by a grant of joint tenancy or reversion, or even an outright
> transfer)."
>
> Matt
>
>
>
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