(Miscellany Volume)
The Will of Oliver Wyth 1291; Will of Hugh Atte Fenne 1476;
The Letters and Will of Thomas Grene(d.1545), Rector of Poringland;
The Letters and Will of Lady Dorothy Bacon, 1597-1629;
The Autobiography of Elizabeth Oakley, 1831-1900.
Oliver Wyth and Hugh Atte Fenne were both wealthy Great Yarmouth men leaving extensive and detailed wills, but there the similarity ends. Oliver Wyth was a leading Yarmouth merchant who invested in farming and whose will also acts as a source for charitable and religious activity throughout East Anglia, whereas Hugh Atte Fenne was resident in London for much of his life and principally concerned with his extensive Norfolk landholdings and the establishment of an almshouse at Herringby. In the original English and Latin with full English summaries of the Latin sections; though written at a time of great religious upheaval (1528/36-45), these letters and will of Thomas Grene, rector of Poringland, are mainly concerned with safeguarding his income but also throw light on his social circle.
Lady Dorothy Bacon was the second wife of Sir Nathaniel Bacon, whose papers appear in NRS volumes LXVI, LXIX, LIII and LXIV. These lively personal letters and will (1597-1629) illustrate the activities of the mistress of a household and her family relationships.
Elizabeth Oakley's life is an unusually early and extended working-class autobiography. Though written in East Yorkshire in 1882, it concentrates on her childhood and youth in Norfolk in the 1830s and 1840s.
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