Philobiblon

“…Sometimes as I work at a series of patent and close rolls. I have a queer sensation; the dead entries begin to be alive. It is rather like the experience of sitting down in one’s chair and finding that one has sat on the cat…’ [F. M. Powicke, Ways of Medieval Life and Thought

That’s a quote often cited by the Centre for Lives and Letters, and it is a lovely metaphor for the feeling you sometimes get in historical research that, just for a second, you’ve got really close to a flesh-and-blood real, individual person – someone just like you, but long dead.

I had one of those moments today, while reading a whole series of printed wills from what were villages around London, such as Walthamstow and Woodford. (In Elizabethan Wills of South-West Essex P.G. Emmison, Kylin Press, Waddesden, 1983)

The moment came from a will proved at West Ham in 1562, of Sybil Lye, a widow who left the bulk of her estate to “to my little maid Anne Hanyson, whom I have brought up and whom I make my executrix, to be delivered to her at 16 or marriage, if she marry advisedly”.

That raises an interesting question about deliberately appointing an under-age executor, but beyond that, I just love the phrase “my little maid”. We’ve got a presumably childless widow who has informally adopted a young girl, probably I’d guess an orphan, maybe even a foundling. Sybil knows that she’s dying (that’s usually when wills were written and given the dates she probably died within days of making this one), and is doing her best to provide for the future of her adoptee.

(Sybil’s also providing reasonably for her “keeper”, the woman who had nursed her, by leaving her clothes and bed-dressings.)
Full text below the fold…

SYBIL LYE
of West Ham widow, 30 April 1562.
To be buried near my late husband Thomas Lye in West Ham churchyard. All my fuel and coals to the poor of West Ham, Stratford-at-Bow[co. Middx.] and St Leonard [ Shoreditch, Middx.?] where most need is by the discretion of Christopher Wilforde my neighbour of Stratford-at-Bow. Towards the amending of the highway from Bow Bridge towards Stratford Langthome [in West Ham] 26s.8d. by the oversight of Christopher. To my keeper Catherine Hobsonne a frize cassock, a flockbed, 2 smocks, a petticoat, a pair of sheets, and the ceiling in the chamber over the same flockbed- To my neighbour John Bumeham of Stratford Langthome for that he shall take pains to see my legacies fulfilled 10s. The residue to my little maid Anne Hanyson, whom I have brought up and whom I make my executrix, to be delivered to her at 16 or marriage, if she marry advisedly with the consent of my overseers afore that time. I commit the tutition, government, education, custody and virtuous bringing up of Anne and the custody and rule of my goods to her willed during her minority to Christopher. I name him and John Bumham my overseers.

Witnesses: John Fanne, John Burneham of West Ham, William Fulstone, Anthony Laurence, John Bovye of Stratford-at-Bow. Proved 12 May
1562.

(p. 7)