Devon Wills Project

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Beckerlegge, J.J. (Ed.). Index of the Wills and Administrations relating to the County of Devon proved in the Court of the Archdeaconry of Barnstaple, 1563-1858 (5 vols.). The Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art (1950).

This is a set of volumes of bound typescripts, the only known copies of which are held at NDRO (Barnstaple), WSL (Exeter) and PWDRO (Plymouth). All the original wills proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Barnstaple were held at Exeter, and thus destroyed in 1942. So the 50000 entries in these five volumes serve only to convey the information that such and such a person did in fact leave a will, now sadly lost. However, a good number of transcripts and abstracts of Barnstaple wills, prepared before the wartime destruction, can be found in other sources.

In these volumes each entry occupies a separate line, blank indents (rather than "ditto" marks) being used to show when names are to be regarded as repeated from one line to the next - in this BECK index, such implied repeated names are inserted explicitly.

Beckerlegge provided lists of surname variants, both within entries for particular wills, and as separate entries. These lists have been turned into additional "See" and "See also" entries in this index, the fact of their being additions being marked by the use of square brackets.

The Beckerlegge volumes have been found to include evident typing errors. On at least three occasions the surname typed at the top of a page (to indicate that the whole page consists of people of that surname) has been found to be incorrect. The compilers of this index have tried to rectify these errors in cases where they are virtually certain what was actually intended.

Many of Beckerlegge's lines end with a code (or contraction). An anonymous Preface to Volume 1 contains the statement: "It is regretted that the key to contractions is incomplete". Indeed, the list that is provided omits the most frequently-used codes ("A", "T", "W"), and is merely:

ACT - Administration cum testamente ACTA - Administration cum testamente annexe ADBN - Administration de bonis non ADM - Aetate, durante minore CTA - Cum testamente annexe

I(nv) - Inventory LA - Letters of Administration Limited A - Limited Administration TN - Testamente Nuncupative

The original codes are transcribed into the Reference column, and an attempt is made to interpret them in the Type column in terms of the standard codes used in the Devon Wills Project. Given the loss of all these probate records, this interpretation is of necessity rather uncertain. However there is little doubt that "T" and "W" have the meaning "Testament" and "Will", respectively - here both are interpreted in the Type column as "W". Where no code has been provided by Beckerlegge, we have made the slightly rash assumption that the item concerns a will, and have inserted "[W?]" in the Type column.