Wills

Family and charitable bequests

By Daphne Knott

The signature of the second Ralph Radcliffe, from his will made in December 1617, is reminiscent of that of Queen Elizabeth I (DE/R F11)
Copy of the will of Ralph Radcliffe, 21 October 1558 (DE/R F2)
The accounts of Elizabeth Radcliffe, widow of Ralph, 1560 (DE/R F3)
List of legacies under Ralph's will of 1 December 1617 (DE/R F12)
This will was made in 1714 when Sir Ralph Radcliffe was already 81 years old. His signature is very scratchy. (DE/R F43)
Monument to the Radcliffe family in Hitchin church

A bed for each child

Ralph Radcliffe died in 1559 aged 40.  He had made his will the previous year during the last year of the reign of Queen Mary Tudor and it is very much in the Catholic tradition.  The collection at Hertfordshire Archives includes a 17th cent copy of the will which had originally been proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury – in itself an indication of his standing at his death, as only the more wealthy families with property in more than one diocese took their wills to be proved there. 

His wife Elizabeth inherited all his property with smaller gifts to his sons Ralph, the eldest, Jeremy and Edward.  All his books were ‘to be divided equally amongst my children’.  It would be wonderful to know exactly what they were, but only one, Plato’s Works, is mentioned in a specific bequest to Master Docwra.  Of furniture, only the beds are listed – one to every child.  At their father’s death Ralph, the eldest was still only 16, Jeremy’s age was uncertain and the youngest, Edward, was aged 6.

Elizabeth became responsible for administering the estate after her husband’s death although the memorandum states that her eldest son Ralph was appointed an executor in the will. 

The accounts show that the value of Ralph’s goods is given as £95 7s, and that over £54 is owed to him.  Ralph’s debts that Elizabeth had to repay amounted to £140.  His funeral expenses and payments to the poor were 46s 8d. 

£40 for the poor of Hitchin

Ralph was only 16 when his father died in 1559 so he had to grow up quickly.  He became a lawyer at the InnerTemple and may have lived mostly in London.  He died in 1621 aged 78.  

His will is very different in character to his father’s – he commits his soul into the hands of God ‘believing by the only death and passion of His dear Son my Lord and only Saviour Jesus Christ to receive and have full and free remission and pardon of all my innumerable sins’.  He is to be buried in Hitchin Church ‘without any vainglorious extraordinary charges and expence’.

His bequests included:

To his godson Ralph Skynner the younger 20s (possibly an ancestor of the John Skynner who founded the Hitchin almshouses in 1666)

To ‘Faithful servant John Daye,’ bailiff of the manor of Maydencroft 20s.

To ‘Old’ servant Elizabeth Rayment 10s.

To Alice Elsey, nurse 20s and all other servants 6s 8d each.

The yearly rent of 4 acrea of arable land to be used for the relief of the aged and impotent people of Hitchin and binding poor fatherless children as apprentices. He says his wife asked him to do this before his death. 

£40 for the poor of Hitchin.

£100 for a monument in Hitchin church 

Sir Ralph Radcliffe, who had sent his grandsons to work in the Levant trade, made his will when he was 81 in 1714. He died in 1720.

Sir Ralph’s heir, his son Edward, inherited the whole of the Priory Estate with substantial sums in South Sea and East India stock, in addition to the stake in the Levant Company trade.  His will also bequeaths 40s per annum for bread to be distributed to the Hitchin poor at Christmas. 

£100 is set aside in Ralph’s will for a monument to be erected.  It is a splendid memorial, dominating the East end of the church to the right of the altar.  It declares of Ralph – ‘having improved his great natural genius by travelling into the most polite countries of Europe, where he gained a perfect knowledge of the world, at his return home he preferred the peaceful exercises of a rural life to the splendour of courts and cities’.  He did not have to endure the hardships of a stay in Aleppo where many traders did not return because of disease but his love of rural pursuits was inherited by his descendants.

 

 

 

This page was added on 18/10/2014.

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