Resources/Written Resources

Wills

In medieval London, wills were proved in church courts, but the court was determined by where a testator resided and the location and value of his/her property, although the general rules noted below under each court were not always followed.  Wills survive for only a small fraction of medieval Londoners, mostly wealthy and middling property owners, and usually only a copy of the will survives, not the original. Probate inventories of a testator’s goods are rare before 1500.  Other testamentary materials include bonds in which executors and administrators swore to fulfill their responsibilities, as well as letters of administration granted to next-of-kin or creditors of people who died intestate (without making a will), which were often recorded in act books or registers.

The Court of Husting, the oldest civic court in London, handled a wide variety of pleas, as well as deeds and wills of London citizens (those who belonged to the freedom of the city).  The wills are copies that primarily record rents and tenements in the city of London, so they often do not include a testator’s properties outside of London, nor bequests of chattels or personal goods.  The wills, which date from 1258, are calendared in Calendar of the Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, Part I: 1258-1358 and Part II: 1358-1688 (London, 1889-90) on BHO and on archive.org as Part I and Part 2.  The Introduction to Part I discusses the business and procedure of the Court; the Introduction to Part II focuses mainly on the bequests.  The main text includes English abstracts of the wills enrolled in the Court. There is also a microfilm edition of transcripts of more than 22,600 deeds and testaments in the Hustings Rolls, published by Chadwyck-Healey; see G. H. Martin, The Hustings Rolls of Deeds and Wills, 1252-1485: Guide to the Microfilm Edition (Cambridge, 1990); the set of 30 reels of microfilm also includes the LMA indices of names and places, as well as calendars of deeds and wills.

The Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) enjoyed sole jurisdiction over London testators with property in more than one diocese, so the wills of the wealthiest testators are usually found here.  London PCC wills from 1384 onwards can be searched and downloaded (for a fee) from TNA, PROB 11; copies are also available on Ancestry for subscribers.  TNA PROB 2 includes inventories for some medieval Londoners.  TNA PROB 12 and PROB 13 contain indexes or calendars of the names of testators and intestates for whom grants of probate and administration were made in a particular year. These wills survive in greater numbers from the late fifteenth century onwards; there are less than twenty PCC wills of Londoners in the fourteenth century, but 1372 wills for the fifteenth century and 763 for the period 1500-1520. Some PCC wills for London are in print; see below under the Logge register.  When the archbishopric of Canterbury was vacant, London wills normally proved in the PCC were proved in the court of the prior and chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury; they are indexed in Sede vacante Wills: A Calendar of Wills Proved before the Commissary of the Prior and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. C. E. Woodruff, Kent Archaeological Society Records Branch 3 (Canterbury, 1914) on Haithi Trust; the wills date primarily to the period 1500-1503.

Bishop of London’s Commissary Court: Commissaries were deputies of the bishop who at times enjoyed jurisdiction over the archdeacons’ court. Registers of wills for this court survive from 1374 (with gaps), and act books from 1496 (with gaps) and include around 50 London parishes as well as many parishes in Middlesex and parts of Essex and Hertfordshire. For a full listing of the medieval wills, see Index to Testamentary Records in the Commissary Court of London, vol. I: 1374-1488 and vol. II: 1489-1570, ed. Marc Fitch, Joint Publication of the British Record Society (vols. 82 and 86) and the Historical Manuscripts Commission, vols. 12-13 (London, 1969-74); also searchable on FindMyPast.  See also the transcripts in Fifty Earliest English Wills, below.

The jurisdiction of the Bishop of London’s Consistory Court encompassed the entire diocese, excluding exempt areas or liberties called peculiars, but including Middlesex and part of Essex and Hertfordshire. The consistory court proved wills of Londoners who had goods worth £5 or more within the diocese but located in more than one of its archdeaconries. Original wills and administrations survive (with gaps) from 1507; these are available on Ancestry if you pay for a subscription. Registers of wills and administrations are extant for 1492 and (with gaps) from 1514.  There are alphabetical lists of wills proved in the court and letters of administration 1514-1858 on the LMA website in the form of pdfs. For some published transcripts, see London Consistory Court Wills 1492 – 1547, ed. Ida Darlington, London Record Society 34 (1967), on BHO.  Wills dated 1362-1559 were also entered in the Archbishop’s registers; see the alphabetical list of testators in Index to Wills Recorded in the Archiepiscopal Registers at Lambeth Palace, ed. J. C. C. Smith (London, 1919); reprinted from The Genealogist, new series, vol. 34 [A-Br on pp. 55-64; Br-Fa on pp. 149-60; Fa-Ly on pp 219-34] and vol. 35 [Ma-Ot on pp. 45-51; Ot-Z on pp. 102-26] (London, 1919).

The jurisdiction of the Court of the Archdeaconry of London was sometimes suspended for part of the year and during episcopal visitations, during which times the bishop or his commissary dealt with business that would otherwise have come before the archdeacons’ courts. For the names of testators whose wills were proved in this court, see Index to Testamentary Records in the Archdeaconry Court of London, vol, I, 1363-1649, ed. Marc Fitch, Index Library/British Record Society, vol. 89 (1979); also searchable on FindMyPast.

Courts of the peculiar jurisdictions. Parishes, liberties or other areas exempt from the jurisdiction of the local archdeacon’s or bishop’s court were called ‘peculiars.’ Only a few peculiar jurisdictions have surviving medieval wills, including the court of the royal peculiar of the dean and chapter of Westminster, which covers the precinct of St Martin le Grand and parts of the parishes of St Anne and St Agnes and St Leonard Foster Lane in London. Will registers survive from 1504; see Westminster Indexes to the Ancient Testamentary Records of Westminster, ed. A. M. Burke (London, 1913).

Wills for residents of Southwark can be found in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the Consistory Court of Winchester (at the Hampshire Record Office), and the Archdeaconry Court of Surrey, which covered the ancient county of Surrey except for the peculiars.  For abstracts of these wills, see Surrey wills (Archdeaconry Court, Spage Register), 1484-1489, trans. A. V. Pealing, Surrey Record Society 17 (London, 1921). The wills can be searched on Ancestry with a subscription.  See also the Union Index of Surrey Probate Records Which Survive from Before the Year 1650, ed. Cliff Webb, British Record Society 99 (London, 1990), searchable at FindMyPast by subscription.

Wills for residents of Westminster can be found in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the Consistory Court of London, and Westminster Abbey Muniments.  See Westminster Indexes to the Ancient Testamentary Records of Westminster, ed. A. M. Burke (London, 1913), which lists the extant wills and administrations in the Consistory Court of London, 1540-1556 and  miscellaneous testamentary records preserved in the Westminster Abbey Muniment, 1228-1700.

For an overview and more details on the original wills, registers, letters of administration, and act books, see the LMA’s Research Guide 6: Wills for London, Middlesex and Surrey before 1858.