Ebook Early Lincoln Wills

The Episcopal Registers of Lincoln commence in a series of Rolls in the year 1209, and are continued in the form of Register Books from 1290 down to the present time, with the exception of breaks between 1547 and 1560, and between 1608 and 1660, for which periods no Registers are known to exist; it is said that four volumes were lost in transit from Buckden, when the Palace there ceased to be a residence of the Bishops of Lincoln.

These Registers, it is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, comprise the records of every kind of Diocesan business, and, amongst other things, the Wills and Administrations which form the subject of the present volume. The entries in the earlier books, as will be seen from these abstracts, are very meagre, but the Wills began to be registered in full during the Episcopate of Bishop Burghersh, and the series then comes down with tolerable regularity to 1547, when Wills ceased to be registered in these books.

There are also at Lincoln a large number of early Wills, ranging from 1283 to 1550, in the Muniment Room of the Dean and Chapter; and a Ms. Register of Lincoln City Wills of the 14th century has recently been found in the Cathedral Library by the Rev. A. R. Maddison, the Librarian. These Wills may possibly be dealt with in a future volume.

The later Wills for the Diocese of Lincoln are of course in the Lincoln District Registry of the Court of Probate. This Registry, established in 1858, exercises the Jurisdiction of the old Consistory Court of the Bishop, and the Courts of the Archdeacons of Lincoln and Stow, the Dean and Chapter, the Sub-Dean in the Peculiar of Kirton-in-Lindsey, and the Prebendaries of New Sleaford, Stow-inLindsey, Louth, Caistor, and Heydour-with-Walton.