Old Basing Probate Material 1601 to 1620

Inventory of William Upton 1614

Probate records for 29 Old Basing residents survive for this period comprising 18 wills, 23 inventories, one court paper and two sets of accounts. Several of the documents indicate considerable wealth with land owned in neighbouring parishes and gentlemen of high status, some owning weapons. Farming is dominant as would be expected on the chalk which dominates in the south of the parish. Much of the north of the parish lies on clay soil.

A fuller's inventory of 1602 reflected the continuing importance of the local cloth industry. Other inventories contained spinning and weaving equipment.

John White (d.1608) was very interesting as he was a gentleman and member of the Marquis of Winchester's staff with interests across southern England.

The documents have been transcribed by the wills group of the Victoria County of Hampshire project based in Basingstoke working from copies of original probate documents supplied by The National Archives and Hampshire Record Office.

Words have been modernized and punctuation added to make reading easier but names have been transcribed as written. Words in italics indicate omissions in the original document which have been added to make sense of the text. Words in square brackets indicate that they have been transcribed as seen but where the meaning is unclear.

A glossary is attached of unusual words and links to the documents are below.