Talk:Court of the Bishop (Consistory) of the Archdeaconry of Totnes

My understanding is that no general index survives for the wills proved at the Archdeaconry Court of Totnes. In other words, Fry's book does not include wills proved at Totnes.

Reply: I have carefully read through the preface to Fry's book, published as vol. 35 of the Index Library series, and it is clear that it does include the records for Totnes. It is a calendar to the wills and administrations proved in the Court of the Principal Registry of the Bishop of Exeter, 1559-1799. Pages x-xi of the preface have a "Descriptive List of Calendars at the District Probate Registry at Exeter" from which the work was compiled. The last item on the list is for the "Consistorial Archidiaconal Court of Totnes," with a footnote that states the "first entry in [the] calendar [is for] 1509, but it really begins about 1530." It shows the earliest surviving will to be dated 1600. The calendar was originally published in 1908, before the destruction of WWII. Volume two of the calendar, or vol. 46 of the Index Library series, makes no mention of the individual courts included. However, the preface states "that the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Exeter... had juridsiction over thirty-seven parishes in the counties of Devon and Cornwall which were Peculiars of the Bishop, as well as power to grant Probates of Wills per testes over the whole Diocese, when there were not bona notabilia within two or more jurisdictions within the Diocese." Therefore I think we can assume the second volume can also contain references to wills of individuals whose property lay within the jurisdiction of the Archdeaconry Court of Totnes. BakerBH 20:13, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Response to Reply by BakerBH: I have read in two or three places that the Archdeaconry Court of Totnes does not have a surviving calendar of wills. I found one such reference at the Devon Record Office's website under "Wills and Probate Records." See: http://www.devon.gov.uk/locating_wills_and_admin.htm In the subsection entitled "Archdeaconry of Barnstaple Wills" we read: "Unfortunately, no such list was made of the wills proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Totnes - and this Court covered a large part of south and west Devon, including Plymouth and the South Hams parishes. The original wills proved at both Barnstaple and Totnes Courts up to 1857 had been sent for storage to Exeter Probate Registry, and were therefore destroyed in 1942." In addition to this evidence, I can reference about 10 wills proved at the Archdeaconry of Totnes in the 1600s and 1700s that were extracted by the College of Arms for a member of my family in about 1907. I have copies of these extracts and there are no corresponding entries in Fry's index. It is certainly true that when a person had property in more than one administrative area, usually the higher court assumed jurisdiction. Nevertheless, I fear that a whole class of wills proved at Totnes (presumably mostly of people with property just in that area) do not appear on any of the lists in Fry's book. Thank you, Greg Ramstedt.