The Armour Archive

Peder suggested in another thread that it's essential to research what people actually owned, as opposed to making assumptions. For some periods, one can find wills with inventories. I'm interested in 16th-century Scotland, and I found a site with wills and other genealogical records for 1500 onwards (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/). For those of you who have researched household goods, what sources did you use? I'm especially interested in sources for lower-class portrayals.

Criminal court records of thefts of household goods seem like another resource. How does one find those? For the Scottish-English Borders, I think I can check the footnotes and bibliography in The Steel Bonnets.

Period art and archaelogical finds are the non-written sources. The ideal would be to have something documented in written records, art, and artifacts.

For 15thc century I refer a lot to the Pastons and Celys, plus some online sources for probate inventories.

You get domestic inventories as well, the pastons produced a few, namely of plate and of items stolen by nasty people.

All of the paston letters are online.

Also import records can show the range of goods brought in and presumably used.

Flittie, have you tried the National Museums Scotland online collections database? It's got a lot of interesting everyday items from 16th century Scotland.

You pretty much hit the two major sources. Probate inventories are great because they tend to give you a broad look at the whole body of good that someone owned, or atleast as complete as we usually get. Wills can be useful but because they typically only list goods that are bequeathed they have they tend to limit you.

Court cases or other documents that list items stolen are wonderful because they give you a context however they tend to be rarer.

At least in England wills and probate inventories in the 16th century are most readily found published by local or regional historical societies or record societies and I would guess that the same is true for Scotland.
I know almost nothing about Scottish courts and even then the realities of them on the border. The same situation tends to be true of them as well.
I'd recommend exploring both sides of the border because the likelihood that you will find the perfect source is limited.

The best way to find sources is to read good academic books and look at the sources they use and look for other studies that have been done. It is kind of like making a web. One book will lead you to a couple which each one of those will lead you to a couple more. The other thing to do is to go to worldcat.org and seach for '16th century Scotland' you will end up with 1,000+ results and while you likely won't look at them all you should look at as many as you can. Don't have to do it all at once. make notes of the titles that look either interesting to you or that look like they might have the kind of information your looking for. Then ILL them. Pay special attention to the related subjects in the entry because while one book may be under 16th century Scotland another book may be under Scotland life to 1603 so your search wouldn't have turned it up.

Remember that this is a process and unless you can find someone who has already started it, it will just take time. Contrary to popular belief it isn't hard but it does take time but you'll get better at it as you go. You might get lucky and find a book called life of women on the Anglo-Scottish border c1540 or maybe some day you will write it. Or you might find something else you like better or you might get tired of it and find someone who does something you also like and rely on them.