Yorkshire Probate - by Colin Blanshard Withers, author of "Yorkshire Parish Registers." Probate is both the most frustrating and the most rewarding source a genealogist can discover. Frustrating because of its complexity, particularly in the Diocese of York, and rewarding because it can unlock the personalities, likes, dislikes and personal relations of our ancestors. Where else could you discover that a seventeenth-century clergyman’s son had ridden up to his father’s house in the dead of night, broken open his strong-box, and stolen the vicar’s remaining store of gold? But in order to use the probate records one must first locate them, and then one has to understand their meaning. No-one has attempted to elucidate these twin requirements in one place in quite this way before, which is not surprising when one considers the enormity of the task. Colin Blanshard Withers has noted, described and explained more than 30 separate probate jurisdictions, and revealed several new, previously unknown caches of probate records, some from previously unknown jurisdictions. Not content with this already formidable undertaking, Colin has provided extensive indexes to the records he has found, and has summarised the nature of probate law and probate practice over seven centuries.
The result is a book which is unique in conception and execution, which adds huge amounts of information to our knowledge of the surviving records, and the interpretation of probate practice. Genealogists and other historians who have used Henry Swinburne’s book on probate law in the Northern Province, originally published at the end of the sixteenth century, George Lawton’s work on the parish structure of the diocese, published in the mid-nineteenth century, and Anthony Camp’s and Jeremy Gibson’s works on the location of probate records from the second half of the twentieth century, now have a reference work from the twenty-first century that brings together in one place information about probate law and location. It’s unlikely that anyone will ever attempt to supplant or replace this work, which joins the canon of reference works that will be used and relied upon for many years to come.
Chris Webb
Keeper of Archives
Borthwick Institute for Archives
University of York
April 2006
CD Contents:
*Previously unpublished indexes to material in the Borthwick: 'Lost' prerogative administrations; Visitation Probates; *Vacancy Wills; Inventories Exhibited Late; and Wills Decreed Out of Court
*Previously unpublished indexes to Dean and Chapter Wills in York Minster Archives
*Index to wills in the Archbishops' Registers
*Index to wills in the Surtees and Thoresby Society volumes
*Manorial and Peculiar Court indexes to: Alborough; Altofts in Normanton; Arkengarthdale; Barnoldswick; Barwick cum Scholes; Batley; Castleford; Fenton; Hunsingore; Leeds Kirkgate; Marsden; Middleham; Newland; Selby; Swinton; Temple Newsham; and Warmfield
*Indexes to Testamentary Disputes in the York Courts
*Miscellaneous Wills Indexes, including: Attercliffe Wills; Bradford Wills; Wills in Yorkshire Archives (big); *Holsworthy's Yorkshire Wills; Nuncupative Wills; and Early Civic Wills of York
*The CD also contains Tables of Fees and Duties; Examples of Death Duty Forms; and Article Reprints of Dickens' *"The Doom of English Wills" and Lawton's "Bona Notabilia"
Thousands of names!
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