Prerogative Court of Canterbury: Administration Bonds before 1601

PROB 51

1541-1565

Bonds from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury entered into by administrators and administrators with will annexed. They supply the place of residence of administrators and administrators with will annexed, and the names and places of residence of their sureties. They also supply an approximate valuation of the intestate's or testator's personal estate. At present only 208 individual bonds in this series are available.

Some of these bonds predate December 1559 which is the date of the earliest surviving administration act book.

The 208 bonds available in this series have become detached from their original files, and they are listed individually in what may in part be an arbitrary order. However the original list records that PROB 51/99-120 at one time constituted an original file, and it is possible many of the other pieces in PROB 51/1-98 and PROB 51/121-208 are all the extant bonds of a few individual files.

Public Record(s)

English

1500 parchment membranes

Topics

Wills and probate

The Act concerning fines and sums of money to be taken for the probate of testaments (21 Henry VIII, c5) required courts with probate jurisdiction to take surety of administrators of intestates' estates and of administrators with will annexed for the proper administration of the estate. Accordingly the Prerogative Court of Canterbury required administrators to enter into bonds, the conditions of which were as follows.

The administrator or administratix would make an inventory of the intestate's or testator's personal estate within a fixed period of time, generally approximately six months after the issue of the grant of administration.

He or she would distribute the residue of the estate after the payment of debts for the good of the deceased's soul.

The or she would also exhibit an account of his or her administration of the estate when required to do so.

The Act for the better settling of intestates' estates (22 & 23 Charles II, c10) stipulated the wording that the bond was to use, which had the effect of imposing slightly different conditions upon administrators, and it made the bonds pleadable in any court of justice.