Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Appendix 3: Male probate inventory values 1660-1759
Average (mean) male probate inventory values by zone 1660-1759
Zone 1660-1679 1680-1699 1700-1719 1720-1739 1740-1759
A Alcester (£) £137 £228 £232 £99 £196
(n) 54 48 60 59 18
B Southern (Champion) Country (£) £129 £92 £154 £180 £139
(n) 25 46 47 45 7
C Central (Wood-pasture) Belt (£) £100 £133 £166 £157 £148
(n) 160 138 138 180 33
D Northern (Needle) District (£) £102 £146 £186 £178 £170
(n) 150 198 164 212 48
Whole Study Area (£) £110 £139 £180 £163 £164
(n) 436 487 448 538 114
As this table demonstrates, apart from a blip in Zone B between 1680 and1699
the mean probate inventory values for males in each zone continued to rise until 1719,
but then fell back in the twenty-year period 1720-39, which had the highest number of
probate inventories in the whole study period. Perhaps the epidemic of 1727 to 1730
carried people off before they had built up their wealth, thus accounting for the lower
figures, but it may also reflect the pause in national economic growth, as described by
Little. 1
Probate values make only an insignificant recovery in the mid-eighteenth
century. However, the practice of retaining inventories was becoming less common,
as reflected in the small number of inventories after 1740, so these later values are
perhaps less reliable. 2
These values are used as crude indicators to personal wealth to
compare periods and zones. The handful of probate inventories after 1759 are
probably not representative of their period and are thus not analysed here.
1 Little, Deceleration in the Eighteenth Century British Economy, p. 10.
2 Discussion of personal wealth in each zone appears in Chapters 4 to 7.
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