A Calendar Of Gloucestershire Wills 1541-1800 Wills and testamentary records are of assistance to genealogists as evidence of the date of a person’s death and for other information which they may contain concerning the dead person’s family, place of residence and property. Before a will can take effect, a grant of probate must be made by a court. If someone dies without having made a will, the court can grant letters of administration for the disposal of the estate. Since 1858, grants of probate and administration have been made in the Principal and District Registries of the Probate Court (before 1877) or the High Court (after 1877) This is an index of the (mostly) original wills, for the Consistory Court of Gloucester 1541-1650 and the following Peculiar Courts: Peculiar Court of Bibury Peculiar Court of Bishops Cleeve Peculiar Court of Childs Wickham Peculiar Court of Deerhurst Peculiar Court of Withington and Dowdeswell The Consistory Court of Gloucester consisted of about 307 parishes, virtually covering the whole of the ancient county of Gloucester apart from Bristol All names and places appearing in the will plus incidental information such as occupation where found in the original documents are included in the index. Testator's name Residence Year of will or admon Reference to page Names are arranged alphabetically, by year with spelling standardized to the most usual spelling. This means some name variants may not appear clustered together. Where there is an alias or alternative surname the entry is given under both names. Parish names have also been standardized. Dates of wills are given in New Style Calendar Viewable on any computer (PC and Mac) using Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is one of a range of old and rare books scanned by The Genealogy Store