Basingstoke Probate Material 1600 to 1700

Wills and inventories survive for Basingstoke in Hampshire Record Office (HRO) and The National Archives (TNA). A proportion of these are being transcribed by the Wills Group of the New Victoria County of Hampshire project based in Basingstoke and will be published in the near future. These transcriptions have been made from copies of original probate documents supplied by HRO and TNA.  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. Basingstoke is described as being in the county of Southampton, the old name for Hampshire.

The records reflect the function of Basingstoke as a market town but also as a farming community with over 3000 arable acres in the parish. The cloth industry flourished in this area in the 16th and early 17th centuries and this is apparent in many records.

A glossary is attached of unusual words.

For the 17th century, records are grouped by decade. These are listed below and contain links to transcriptions of all the documents.

• Basingstoke Probate Material 1601-10
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1611-20
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1621-30
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1631-40
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1641-50
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1651-60
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1661-70
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1671-80
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1681-90
• Basingstoke Probate Material 1691-1700