* PLEASE NOTE: THE ORIGINALS ARE HELD AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES [CLASS PROB 6]

If a person dies without making a will, a relative or creditor can apply for letters of Administration (Admon for short). They become known as the Administrator or Administratrix, the latter often being the widow or relict of the deceased.rnrnThe admons showing the appointment of the administrator(s) are not generally as informative as wills themselves. Admons will include the name, address and occupation of the deceased, along with date and place of death. The administrator's name,address and occupation will be noted as well as his or her relationship to the deceased. The identity of beneficiaries is not noted, nor any details of how the estate is distributed. However for the last 4 years of the period covered by this index such information might be gleaned from surviving Inland Revenue Estate Duty Records which date from 1796.

Letters of administration could be granted in other cases, such as where a valid will is made but no executors are mentioned. Alternatively a testator might appoint executors who died before the testator or who "renounced" or refused to act in such capacity. In such cases the court granted letters of administration with "Will attached" or "Will annexed". Administrators were appointed by the court to deal with the estate in accordance with the terms of the will.

As the Prerogative Court of Canterbury administrations contain details of many seamen, it makes them a particularly valuable resource to the genealogist

THE PREROGATIVE COURT OF CANTERBURY ADMINISTRATIONS 1750-1800 PROJECT
by Anthony J Camp

The original calendars from which this index was compiled are now at The National Archives. These calendars [PROB 13], worn and, in places, indistinct, were apparently re-copied in the 19th century, and the copies [PROB 12] now form the chief means of reference to the registered wills [PROB 11] and administration act books [PROB 6] of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The entries in the calendars are arranged in chronological order and subdivided by the first letter of the surname only.

In 1968, through the good offices of the late Miss Alice Stanley, then Superintendent of the Department of Literary Enquiry at the Principal Probate Registry, I was able to borrow the older series of calendars for the years 1750-1800, each year being in one or two volumes and containing, on average, about ten thousand entries. I organised a team of forty volunteers over the next five years and we wrote index slips (mostly paid for by Dr John E. Frost of New York) for the will and administration entries.

The slip-writers were M.A. Byrne, Mrs Beryl Crawley, I.E. Dickens, Alan R. Dickins, Philip Dyke, K.J. Dyer, G.K.S. Hamilton-Edwards, V.P. Elliott, W.S. Field, Mrs. M.J. Hadaway, Mrs Joyce Hanson, A.S. Harcourt, David Hawkings, Mrs E.B. Hilken, Miss Mary Hollingsworth, Colonel and Mrs H.S.P. Hopkinson, P. Horsley, A.J. Howard, S.H. Jollye, Edward Legg, Miss Joan M. Masters, Dr W.E.D. Moore, Miss Jennifer Mount, Mrs R.A. Newland, W.B. Pearman, John L. Rayment, G.M. Smart, Miss Alice Stanley, Mrs Brenda Swain, Commander P.C. Patten-Thomas, F.J. Thomason, Mrs Mary Tisdall, Clifford Towse, Captain J.A.S. Trydell, Michael L. Walker, Mrs Margaret Whicher, Mrs F.B.L. Wood, Michael J. Wood and myself.

The resulting half-million slips were sorted into order by Miss J.M. Masters, Michael J. Wood and myself, with the assistance of Dr Joseph Druse. Miss Masters and Mr Wood checked thousands of doubtful entries marked by the slip writers and many others which were noted during the sorting.

I edited the will entries and these were published by the Society of Genealogists as An index to the wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1750-1800 (6 volumes, 1976-92). Some account of the problems with the handwriting of the calendars encountered during the project is given in the preface to the first volume.

Drawing on our experience with the wills Mr Wood had meanwhile sorted the administration slips into alphabetical order, checking thousands of entries against the calendars and bringing together and cross-referencing many notes of former and later grants. I typed the slips and continued Mr Wood's work in bringing together and cross-referencing the former and later grants and aliases, checking the many inconsistencies in the PROB 12 calendars. This was greatly aided by the use of a word-processor (in a way that had not been possible with the wills) but revealed very considerable discrepancies between the PROB 13 and PROB 12 calendars. Where noted these variant entries have been included in the present index. It has unfortunately only been possible to check a relatively small number of the most mystifying in the act books themselves.

That the PROB 12 calendars are not entirely complete has long been recognised, but this cross-referencing of surnames with aliases, of former and later grants, and of surnames entered under prefixes such as De, De La, Mc, O', Van and Von, as well as under their main elements, shows that they are sometimes not very accurate, differing spellings being quite frequently found. The stated places of residence must sometimes have resulted from a most cursory examination of the act, so that Canterbury Way may appear in the calendar as "Canterbury" and Oxford Street as "Oxford". The names of the many ships which appear from 1781, particularly those in French, and which were often garbled by the sailors themselves, show great variation in spelling. When the ship "Overyssel" appears in the calendars as two ships called "Overy" and "Stale" and when "Glory" appears as "Celery", we know that all is not quite what it should be. A third of the entries in the present index relates to persons who died in Foreign Parts (Pts) reflecting the great number of sailors and soldiers killed at sea or overseas in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

If an entry is not found in this index which might with good cause have been expected to be there then the administration act book for the appropriate year should be searched.

My intention in 1968 had been to provide an interim index in a relatively short period, as we did not have the resources to check all the entries against the act books, a great labour which could then only have been carried out at the probate registry. Little did I guess at the labour and difficulties which would be involved in bringing even this simple task to fruition. However, my thanks must again be recorded to the abovementioned volunteers all those years ago, each of whom went away so eagerly with an old decaying calendar and their first shoe-box full of slips. The many dozen shoe-boxes that were eventually needed were kindly obtained by Miss Eunice Wilson. Many thousands of users have cause to be indebted to their altruism and enthusiasm.