Isabel Huchinsonne was a widow, a mother and a grandmother who lived in Skelton in Marske, Swaledale, Yorkshire. She had six sons - Rowland (the eldest), Christopher, Thomas, William, Cuthbert and Richard - one daughter, Elizabeth. She also had at least three grandchildren, John, James and Katherine, who were Rowland and his wife Agnes’s children. One of her other sons was married to Dorothy, who received Isabel’s best russet frock and best red petticoat. Her own daughter Elizabeth did a little better with the best black frock and a worsted kirtle, and she received a feather bed and a covering for it lined with harden. Isabel also had a sister Margaret to whom she left a blue gown.

There were more Huchinsonnes in Skelton: Isabel left another William Hutchinsonne and his sister Agnes each a felt (probably a hat) and a blanket but without specifying how they were related to her. There was another person in Skelton with whom Isabel did have a relationship although her will makes it plain she was not proud of it. She left £9 to Jane Huchinsonne, ‘a bastarde wenshe’, whom she believed her husband John had ‘begottinge with Agnes Paycocke’.

Isabel’s son William Huchinsonne was styled Sir William as was conventional for a man in holy orders. He must have had a very lean living as Isabel gave his brothers Rowland, Christopher and Thomas sums of money amounting to 20 marks to make sure he had enough to eat and wear ‘for his natural life’. She had some worries that Christopher would not travel to check on his brother’s welfare and, if so, he was to give his share of the money to Thomas to carry out the duty for him.

Her generosity to men of the church did not end with her own family. Isabel left money to the curate of her local church - St Giles’s in Skelton. Sir John Kinge witnessed her will and was left 16d and given an additional 6d for repairs to the church. Maybe it was Isabel’s belief in charity that made her generous to her husband’s daughter on the wrong side of the blanket.

Isabel may have planned to make herself some new garments since the ones in her inventory taken after her death were described as ‘worne lyninge geare’ and the list also included 2½ yards of linen cloth. She left two yards of it to Robert Stevensonne.

Some of the items in Isabel’s inventory are mentioned in her will only as ‘the reste of my goods unbequethed’ including six silver spoons and ‘an old syde saddle’. These were to be sold to pay her debts and funeral expenses. Six named women received 8d apiece and they may have accompanied her body to its burial.

She also had friends to whom she left clothes including Syth Blades who had Isabel’s best gown and one of her red petticoats. Isabel’s best gown was black – maybe Syth wore it to the funeral to remember and mourn her friend. In happier times, Isabel no doubt wore the same gown with the felt hat destined for her kinswoman Agnes as she rode side saddle to church with her family to meet her many friends and neighbours in the churchyard – where she studiously avoided Jane and her mother Agnes!