6 ms·

Really worth not glossing over: Alice left £438 in funeral expenses. Going by the inflation calculation earlier in the article, that's over £130,000 in today's

• defrost 3y ago
  For context Alice and husband were very much part of the London 1% rich merchant class of their time (Alice died in 1593). Her father was Sir Andrew Judde (c. 1492–1555), mayor of London in 1550 and a master of the Skinners Company. In 1555, she married another Skinner, Thomas Smythe (1522–1591), an MP and a successful merchant himself. Three years later, Thomas became the customs collector for the port of London, a government role that brought him vast riches and the nickname Customer Smythe. and In all, Alice’s possessions came to £1084 17s 1d, plus £1248 that was received from the executors of her husband’s will. The total would be worth almost £700,000 today and this didn’t include the value of the house itself or any other property she owned elsewhere. Her wishes were that a fifth of her London wealth|assets go toward monuments and services that made a statement about herself and her family. It's likely that greater wealth was held in trusts and structures for her heirs and already in the hands of executors and trustees prior to her death (as a seperate "business for generating income legally seperate from personhood") much as the wealthy do today.