Wills provide a fantastic resource for the family historian.

They contain masses of detail with information about the deceased’s possessions, estate and family members. Many early wills have detailed inventories attached, listing all the deceased’s possessions and their value.

Before 1858 all wills were proved by ecclesiastical courts. There is a bewildering array of such courts and jurisdictions and it can be hard for the beginner to fathom out just how to access an ancestor’s will.

In England and Wales there are will registers for the Prerogatives Courts of Canterbury (at The National Archives) and York (at the Borthwick Institute, York) that go up to 1858. Since then all English wills have been registered and collated by the Principal Probate Registry, London.

Wills registered in local diocesan courts can be found in the county or diocesan record office.

Thanks to local and county record offices and family history societies, help is available and it is usually a fairly simple process to establish whether a will exists for your particular ancestor. For example, Lancashire County Records Office at Preston has a comprehensive list of wills for the north west, while there are many printed volumes by the various historic societies containing the names of testators and the whereabouts of their wills.

Wills and inventories can be an eye-opener to the lifestyle and possessions of your ancestors. In the 17th and 18th centuries even relatively poor people would have their household items listed in an inventory attached to the will.

One difficulty for the beginner in this field of research will be making sense of the handwriting. The wills of the 16th and 17th centuries were written in what is known as ‘secretary hand’ (the forerunner of cursive script). This, coupled with old-fashioned spelling and the formation of individual letters, can make them hard to decipher, even for more experienced researchers. But don’t be put off – you will find staff at record offices extremely helpful and you can always get a copy of the will enlarged and study it at your leisure. Of course the further back you go you will encounter Latin wills and these need specialist knowledge to decipher.

If you don’t know when your ancestor died, finding a will is more of a challenge, but again the various indexes at record offices will narrow the search. Also remember that a considerable amount of time may have elapsed after the will was made and before it was proved for probate purposes. Some will indexes are also available on-line. A simple search, eg ‘Lancashire wills’ will bring up a list of options and information.

Bear in mind that the cost of making a will meant that they were rarely made unless a) the testator was really old or b) was ill and likely to die – anyone who contracted a serious illness 200plus years ago was not likely to survive.

There are many things you will discover in researching a will e.g: where the testator lived, the property he owned, his profession and family names and connections. Beneficiaries of course are listed along with names of the executors and witnesses.

Lancashire Records Office gives good overview to will resources at www.lancashire.gov.uk/education/record_office/services/enquiries_research.asp

A useful and growing resource is the Documents On Line service from NationalArchives. This contains a fully-searchable wills database which will often yield results – I discovered the will of my x3 great grandfather from Lewisham, Kent, by this method. Once you have identified your will it costs £3.50 to download. Log on to www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/
Cheshire.gov.uk/recordoffice/wills contains 130,000 probate documents proved at Chester, mainly for Cheshire residents.

The McGlaughlin guides: ‘Reading Old Handwriting’ and ‘Wills before 1858’ by Eve McLaughlin are also essential reading in the search for and deciphering of old wills. These are available through most family history societies and bookshops.

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