ABSTRACT
The probate inventory has been an extensively mined source, reflecting the information it can supply on the material culture of individuals and households from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Many historians of material culture have attempted to chart the growing sophistication of the household and the extension of domestic practices through the impact and ownership of a range of goods and consumer durables. The main factor captured in the data is not merely the greater penetration of such items through the social hierarchy, but the increased diversity, specialisation and quality of the goods owned. In addition, as the period progressed, many of the goods that denoted or enhanced levels of personal consumption and comfort in the seventeenth century were themselves subject to obsolescence and substitution. The lack of a spouse to undertake specifically gendered work made the home imbalanced in both contemporary eyes and in the pages of prescriptive literature.
