Wills and probate records

How to find a will from 1858 onwards through the probate calendar, pre-1858 church court records, Scottish testaments, what a will reveals and what it costs to order a copy.

A will is the one record in which an ancestor speaks for themselves: who they loved, who they fell out with, what they owned and where it went. Even a labourer's will names children, married daughters' new surnames and grandchildren, and can link two generations that nothing else connects. More people left wills than you might think, and finding them is easier than most record types.

England and Wales from 1858: the probate calendar

From 12 January 1858 probate was handled by civil courts and every grant was listed in a national index, the Probate Calendar. Each entry gives the name, address, date and place of death, the date of the grant, the executors (often relatives, with their relationship) and the value of the estate. The Calendar is free to search on the government's Find a Will service (probatesearch.service.gov.uk) and is also on Ancestry to 1995. Ordering a copy of the will from the government service costs a small fee and arrives as a PDF within a couple of weeks.

If there was no will, an administration ("admon") was granted, and the Calendar entry names the administrator, usually the widow or a child. There is no will to order, but the entry itself is still evidence.

Before 1858: the church courts

Wills were proved by ecclesiastical courts, and which court depended on where the property lay:

• The Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) for the wealthier and for estates spanning dioceses in the southern province. Its registers 1384 to 1858 are at The National Archives (PROB 11), indexed and downloadable online for a fee. Also on Ancestry.
• The Prerogative Court of York (PCY) for the northern province; indexes and images through the Borthwick Institute and Findmypast.
• Diocesan and archdeaconry courts for everyone else: held in county record offices, many indexed online by the record office, a family history society or a subscription site. Start at the record office for the county where the person died.

Pre-1858 probate often includes an inventory, a room-by-room list of possessions with values, which is as close as you'll get to standing in an ancestor's house.

Scotland

Scottish "testaments" (there was no will as such for land until 1868) are indexed and viewable on ScotlandsPeople from 1513 to 1925, with later records at National Records of Scotland. See Scottish ancestry.

Ireland

Most pre-1858 Irish wills were destroyed in 1922, but indexes, abstracts and the post-1858 calendars survive; see Irish ancestry.

What a will can tell you

• Children's names, including married daughters with their husbands' names, and children who had died leaving grandchildren.
• Where the family lived and what they owned: a cottage, a shop, tools, "my best bed".
• Relationships otherwise unprovable: "my brother-in-law John Smith", "my nephew now in America".
• Hints of family quarrels: the shilling left to a disinherited son.
• The names of witnesses and executors, who were often neighbours or kin worth investigating.

Search tips

• Search the Calendar for everyone in the family, not just the direct line; a childless uncle's will often names every niece and nephew.
• Try the year of death and the two following years; probate could take time.
• Spelling in the Calendar follows the will, so search variants.
• Widows and spinsters left wills too, and theirs are often richer in family detail than men's.
• Before 1858, check which court by looking up the parish in a probate jurisdiction map or the record office's guide.

Combine what the will says with the census and certificates, and the result is usually a proven generation plus several side branches.