Catalogue description Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Court for Probate of Wills and Granting Administrations: Original Calendars and Indexes of Wills and Administration Grants

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Details of PROB 13
Reference: PROB 13
Title: Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Court for Probate of Wills and Granting Administrations: Original Calendars and Indexes of Wills and Administration Grants
Description:

Original calendars and indexes of wills and administration grants.

The indexes were compiled on a daily basis in the registry of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and the Court for Probate of Wills and Granting Administrations as grants of probate and administration were issued. The indexes compiled during the existence of the Court for Probate of Wills and Granting Administrations, which exercised probate jurisdiction throughout England and Wales from 1653 to 1660, provide evidence of the internal organisation and operation of the Court.

Between 1653 and 1660 it is known that the Court divided its business upon geographical lines, and different seats of the Court were established to administer probate jurisdiction in the different geographical areas.

C J Kitching has published a contemporary account of the different seats' areas of responsibility, and it would appear that the various extant calendars for the period 1653 to 1660 in PROB 13 are the calendars of the different seats that operated during this period.

PROB 13/55-62, together with PROB 13/63-94, provide evidence about the organisation of the Court for Probate of Wills and Granting Administrations.

Not all the administration act books of the Court for Probate of Wills and Granting Administrations are extant, and accordingly the calendars in PROB 13 provide evidence of the existence of administration acts now lost.

Date: 1384-1800
Arrangement:

The indexes were known as calendars, and the term is still in use for these documents in many publications on the records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and other courts with probate jurisdiction. The majority of the indexes or calendars cover a single year, and they list the names of the testators and intestates of whose estates grants of probate and administration were made in that year.

As a general rule the surviving paper calendars, compiled for the Court's own use, for some years in the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth century are in PROB 13, while those for the second part of the eighteenth century and for the nineteenth century (until the abolition of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in 1858) are in PROB 15

Most of the calendars in PROB 13 also list sentences promulgated by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, either in a separate section after the section for surnames beginning with the letter S, or at the end of the volume. Sentences are often omitted from the calendars in PROB 12 and PROB 15. There are no calendars in PROB 13 for the years 1801 to 1858, but these years of the Court's existence are covered by calendars in PROB 15 and PROB 12

Many of the calendars in PROB 13 (as in PROB 12 and PROB 15) bear on their covers the names of the will registers in PROB 11 which they index.

Many of the indexes in PROB 13 were transcribed to produce the working indexes to wills and administrations in PROB 12 and in PROB 15. However some of the calendars in this series are transcripts of other in PROB 15

Each page of the volume was divided into two columns, and the names of testators were written in the left hand column and the names of intestates in the right hand column. At a later date the information in these calendars was transcribed into other calendars, and the transcripts were made available to searchers as a means of reference to wills, probate acts, and administration acts.

The calendars in PROB 13, in common with the calendars in PROB 15, can be used to supply defects in the PROB 12 calendars. If for instance a PROB 12 calendar does not supply a quire reference for a registered will, or the relevant monthly section of an act book does not contain a particular probate or administration act, it is sometimes useful to consult other calendars for the same year in PROB 13 and PROB 15. Nevertheless it will often be found that an obscure or incomprehensible entry in a PROB 12 calendar has been copied verbatim from an identical entry in a PROB 13 or PROB 15 calendar, and that nothing is gained by consulting the calendars in the latter series.

Most of the calendars in this series also list sentences promulgated by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, either in a separate section after the section for surnames beginning with the letter S, or at the end of the volume. Sentences are often omitted from the calendars in PROB 12 and PROB 15. There are no calendars in PROB 13 for the years 1801 to 1858, but these years of the Court's existence are covered by calendars in PROB 15 and PROB 12

The conventions used by the compilers of the calendars in PROB 12, PROB 13, and PROB 15 are largely identical.

The dates given in the PROB 13 list are the dates that the calendars cover and not necessarily the dates of compilation. Nor does the list generally indicate the coverage of the calendars in the series. As a general rule it is not until the post Restoration period that it is possible to be confident that a calendar includes both testators and intestates, and that it was supposed to cover all the Court's grants of probate and administration for the year it covers.

Related material:

For files of commissions which were issued by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury to authorise local officials to administer the oaths of executors who were unable to visit the Court in London see PROB 52

Separated material:

Wanting for: 1589, 1644-1645, 1703

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 243 volume(s)
Physical condition: Parchment
Access conditions: Many records unfit for production
Custodial history: In the 1960s the calendars that now form PROB 13/186-242, together with other calendars, were lent to the Society of Genealogists by the Principal Registry of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court, which then held most of the records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The other calendars lent to the Society were for years for which the calendars are described in the PROB 13 catalogue as being wanting. These calendars were apparently returned by the Society to the Principal Probate Registry and may have been transferred by the Registry to the Public Record Office to end up in PROB 15 PROB 13/186-242 were restored to official custody and transferred to the Public Record Office in 1994. PROB 13/1-184 were transferred from the Principal Probate Registry to the Public Record Office in 1970.
Publication note:

A number of the calendars included in the list for PROB 13/55-62 have been cited in a modern index: Index to administrations in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1649-1654, vol 1 ed. by John Ainsworth (Index Library, LXVIII (London, British Record Society, 1944).

Administrative / biographical background:

The earliest calendars were compiled retrospectively, probably at the end of the sixteenth century or at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as lists of testators in particular will registers. The earliest calendars compiled contemporaneously as working records for Court officials date from the first two decades of the seventeenth century.

The earliest stage in the compilation of the calendars appears to have been at the time of the grant of probate or administration when the name of the testator or intestate was written down in a bound volume of paper pages. The Court needed an immediate and accessible record of the issue of the grant of probate or administration, particularly to enable its officials to prevent the issue of more than one grant upon the same estate to separate applicants.

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