Old Basing (Basing) Probate Material 1541-60

St Mary's Church (formerly St Peter and St Paul), Old Basing

Twenty four wills and 22 inventories survive for this period of people involved in the local farming community and related trades. Virtually all the surviving wills reflect the pre-Reformation Catholic society with the souls of testators left to the Lady Saint Mary and the Holy Company of Heaven.

Six testators died in 1557 and seven in 1558 which may reflect a local epidemic of the sweating sickness or the plague.

Wills and inventories survive for Old Basing in Hampshire Record Office (HRO) and The National Archives (TNA). 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. Old Basing is described as Basing being in the county of Southampton, the old name for Hampshire.

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