ABSTRACT
Legal treatises referred to the executor of a will as a person with great responsibility. He arranged and paid for the funeral and burial; he paid all legacies and ensured that the heir inherited land according to conditions specified in the will, he apportioned reasonable parts to the widow and children; and he discharged the deceased's debts and collected his credits. In sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century King's Langley, Hertfordshire, 37 per cent of men who made wills named a son sole executor while their widow lived. These men were the wealthier ones, who were probably most afraid of their widows' remarriage. By contrast, Lincolnshire and Sussex men named a child sole executor in preference to a wife—who may or may not have been the child's mother—at a rate of only 13 per cent. Wives were commonly referred to in their husbands' wills as 'dear and well-beloved'; the adjectives were formulaic, but they nonetheless suggest affection and trust.
