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Catalogue description Prerogative Court of Canterbury: Bundles of Proxies
| Reference: | PROB 19 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Prerogative Court of Canterbury: Bundles of Proxies |
| Description: |
Documents appointing proctors to act on behalf of persons with an interest in business in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The vast majority of them relate either to renunciations of their rights by executors and next of kin of intestates, or to the appointment of guardians of minors. The commonest types of proxy in this series are the proxy of renunciation and the curation proxy. Proxies appointing proctors to act on behalf of parties to litigation are exceptional in this series. In the documents, proctors are specified by name, although a clause was usually added to say that any other competent proctor could act instead. In the case of curation proxies the ages of minors are generally given, though in many proxies the document may just state that the minor was between the ages of seven and twenty one, or that he or she was less than seven. Proxies of married women may bear the consents of their husbands. The records in this series also contain personal seals and signatures or marks of authentication of the persons appointing proxies, and also the signatures of witnesses, and can therefore be used as indexes of literacy, including in the case of curation proxies, childhood literacy. |
| Date: | 1674-1718 |
| Arrangement: |
There is a bundle of proxies for each of the years covering the records in this series (1674-1718), and within each bundle proxies, endorsed with the name of the testator or intestate and usually the date of exhibition, are tied in sub-bundles according to the initial letter of the testator's or intestate's surname. Holes in the documents indicate the extent to which many of the proxies in PROB 19 were at some date filed on spike files. |
| Held by: | The National Archives, Kew |
| Legal status: | Public Record(s) |
| Language: | English |
| Creator: |
Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1660-1858 |
| Physical description: | 24 bundle(s) |
| Administrative / biographical background: |
In proxies of renunciation executors, or in the case of intestate estates, next of kin, renounced their rights in the administration of the goods of the deceased, consented to the appointment of another to administer the estate, and appointed a proctor to appear in court on their behalf. In curation proxies persons between the ages of seven and twenty-one appointed curators or guardians to act on their behalf in litigation or in the administration of estates in which they were interested, and they appointed proctors to appear on their behalf. Curation proxies may consist of two papers filed together. In one the minor appoints a curator to act on his or her behalf and a proctor to appear in court, in the other the curator consents to his or her appointment and to the appointment of the proctor. If the minor was less than seven years old an application to be appointed would be made directly by the aspirant guardian. |
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