Thankyou everybody for your helpful input.

Sue, I did not know that age 14 was the age at which one was considered an adult. That is a very good thing for a person like me to know when looking at other wills in the Manx Notebook. Thanks.

Sue, I will be very satisfied with your explanation about Henery and Henry being one and the same person, in William Taggart's will of 1721. That has been a real puzzle for me, but I am happy you have settled it.

Sue, I do have another question for you: Our Catharine Taggart was married by the time that her father William Taggart was dying and made his Will in 1721: were married children usually named in the Wills?

Sue, yes I did actually know (amazing for my level, eh?) that when children died, very often the next baby was named after the deceased. In my dad's mother's Scottish family tree, in one of the generations where the parents had 11 children, four of the first 6 wee babies died, and then the parents named four of their next five babies with the christian names of their deceased babies.

Frances and Viv, thankyou for your information too. It is very interesting to know that in some families there were children named with the same name by the same set of parents, practiced more in the 17th century as Frances says. I wonder why they would do that? Can you imagine the chaos if a parent shouted out a child's name if one of two identically named children had done something naughty!

Thankyou all very much for your help.

I would just like to take this opportunity, if I may, to say to other very amateur beginners in genealogy like me: do not be afraid or intimidated to ask questions on this IsleofMan.com Manx Genealogy message board. These amazingly knowledgeable genealogists are very kind and always willing to help with your questions.

Kindest regards,
Penny