Appendix 2 - Making the inventory – law and procedure

Summary

The obligation to produce an inventory of a deceased person's goods as part of the procedure for obtaining probate or letters of administration developed during the medieval period. Some aspects were formalised in legislation by the Probate Fees, Inventories etc. Act 1529, which was not repealed until 1925 by which time the practice of producing an inventory had fallen out of use. Although the 1529 Act did not give a reason for making an inventory, later commentators explained it as to prevent fraud, principally by the executor, and to protect creditors and anyone else having a claim on the estate. It is quaintly explained by Swinburne as ‘least the executor be disposed to deale unfaithfully, shoulde defraude the creditors or legataries, by concealing the goods of the deceased.’

Diocesan officials, proctors and notaries public who practised in the church courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and earlier and the scriveners who worked for some decedents probably had formularies or notes to guide them with the documentation. How the laity who helped people with wills and inventories gained the knowledge of procedure and the formulas to use is not known and there were no printed law books to guide either group until the end of the sixteenth century. The process is described here to inform the reader of the different requirements and enable a comparison with Bedfordshire practice.

The framework for making inventories set out in the 1529 Act focussed on curbing excessive fees, setting the scale for proving wills and exhibiting inventories (which remained unchanged throughout the period covered by this volume) and setting out who had priority for appointment as administrator in cases of intestacy. The framework was commented on and developed in books published later in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The detailed procedure has to be teased out of these sources.

William Lyndwood's Provinciale, made in the previous century, gathered together orders and procedures that governed the church. It was printed in an English trans¬lation in 1534 and was later cited by Swinburne. Henry Swinburne, who practised in the church courts of York, published a Brief Treatise on Testaments in 1591 with editions in 1611, 1635 and 1640. West's Symboleography, 1598 was a precedent book on all subjects. The Canons of the Church of England 1604, produced by the Bishop of London were concerned with doctrine and procedure from the church's standpoint.