ABSTRACT

In 1589 Richard Brande wrote his will. His principal heir and executor was his son Robert, but he left his wife, Margaret, both regular income from some rental property and also, ‘if it do so please her’, the ‘guest chamber during her life with the furniture therein being, with free egress and regress into other places of the house to dispatch her business which cannot be conveniently done in her chamber’.1 Providing Margaret Brande with houseroom for the remainder of her years, this will is among thousands that challenge three of our most durable assumptions about the material conditions of life in early modern England.