User:Senra/William Jennens

William Jennens (1701–1798), also known as the 'Acton miser' and 'William the Rich', was Britain's richest man at the time of his death. His estate was said to be worth over £2,000,000 though it was probably closer to £1,100,000 producing an annual income of about £40,000 although The Times of 20 July 1798 published a tabulated list of the late Mr Jennens worth as a capital of £432,509 and an annual interest of £119,415. Jennens died without leaving a will (intestate) and the subsequent legal proceedings took 130 years without reaching a conclusion; the legal costs exhausting the Jennens inheritance in the process.

Charles Dickens based the fictional Jarndyce and Jarndyce court case in his Bleak House novel on the Jennens inheritance legal proceedings; Bleak House was published in twenty instalments between 1852 and 1853.