Registrar of the High Court of Delegates, and Registrar of Ecclesiastical and Admiralty...

DEL 10

1636-1857

Testamentary exhibits in testamentary causes preserved by the registrar of the High Court of Delegates, and from 1833 the registrar of the ecclesiastical and Admiralty causes of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (otherwise in PCAP).

The majority of the exhibits are original wills signed and sealed by the testators. They are accompanied by various other types of exhibits, including affidavits by witnesses and executors as to the authenticity of wills, proxies appointing proctors to act for parties to the cause, commissions to swear executors, and administration bonds.

It is clear from DEL 11/1 that DEL 10/1-186 were originally kept in eight bundles. DEL 10/1-105 had been formed into four bundles by 1744, DEL 10/106-160 were listed as forming two further bundles in the nineteenth century, and an annotation at the end of DEL 11/1 (in the hand of G R Rodman, an official of the Principal Probate Registry) makes it clear that DEL 10/161-186 were kept in two further bundles. DEL 10/1-160 may have been numbered 1-160 circa 1849 when DEL 11/3 was compiled. Rodman also annotated some of the documents in DEL 10 and the wrappers placed around them. His annotation on DEL 10/161, no 8, is dated July 1886.

Documents are dated by the date they were created and not the date of exhibition, which might be many years later. However, information which was endorsed on the documents or written on their covers has been recorded. This information may include the date of exhibition, the name of the cause in which it was exhibited, and the date of sentence or probate in the court of first instance, or the date of probate or sentence in the High Court of Delegates or the Judicial Committee.

For further lists and indexes see DEL 11

Public Record(s)

English

188 box(es)

In 1962 Supreme Court of Judicature

Topics

Litigation

Religions

Navy

Wills and probate

Armed Forces (General Administration)

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council's responsibility for appeals in English and Welsh probate causes was transferred to the House of Lords when the Court of Probate was created in 1858. The records in DEL 10 were transferred to the Court of Probate's registry, on account of the high incidence of records relating to probate among them. They were inherited from that registry by its successor, the Principal Probate Registry of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice and from thence transferred to the Public Record Office. They were at that time referred to as 'filed wills' or 'filed papers'.