Will and Inventory of Roger Smith, yeoman, 1684

Smith was tenant of the second largest Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Copyhold (no 11), The Farm, which still exists at the north end of the village street.  He was a very wealthy farmer, maltster and brewer with an inventory valued at £713. He possessed malt and dry barley valued at £141, wheat at £60, Barley at £89, sheep at £69 and hay at £62. Smith was a Quaker who openly opted to be buried ‘at Alton in the said county in the burial place of the people called Quakers’. The will and inventory are catalogued separately in the National Archives. The inventory is very tightly rolled and looks like a cigar. Some of it is very faded and a UV light was used to decipher some of the valuations.