William Jennens died with an unsigned will in his pocket, and claimants fought over his fortune until 1915

William Jennens lived alone in the basement of Acton Place near Long Melford. The Bury and Norwich Post called him "the richest commoner in England" and said his property exceeded £2 million. Historians put it nearer £1.1 million. He never married. A will was found in his coat pocket, sealed and unsigned. The usual account says he left his spectacles at home^†. He was buried in the family vault at Acton Church on 29 June 1798. The Court of Chancery treated him as intestate. His land went to the Curzon family. Richard William Penn Curzon, later 1st Earl Howe, ended up with it. His personal property went to his next of kin, including Mary, Lady Andover, and William Lygon, later Earl Beauchamp. From 1849, groups of people named Jennens and Jennings in England and the United States formed clubs to press claims. They spent more than £100,000. The time limit had run out unless they could prove fraud. The last claim failed in 1915, 117 years after his death. The scholar William Dunstan, writing in The Dickensian in 1997, names the Jennens case among the models for Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Bleak House. In 2026 the money has long been with the Howe and Beauchamp lines.