DEVON NAMES - COMMISSARY COURT OF LONDON 1374-1649 & 1661-1700

Extracted by Jean E. Harris from:

The Index Library, British Record Society, has many volumes of wills proved in various church courts and we must acknowledge and thank them for this long and tedious work of indexing these wills from their original sources. These Devon references recorded here have been extracted from the following Index Library volumes:

These wills were proved in the Commissary Court which should not be confused with another church court viz: the Consistory Court. To better understand these church courts named Consistory and Commissary I turned to Mark Heber's book Ancestral Trials and here is what he says (page 183):

"If a deceased's property was in more than one archdeaconry (but all in the same diocese) his will was proved in the Bishop's court (a Diocesan or Consistory Court). During some periods, an archdeacon might decide not to exercise his jurisdiction, so that all the wills would have to be proved in the bishop's court. There were also periods of inhibition, when a bishop was undertaking a visitation to an archdeaconry. During a visitation the arcdeacon's court would be closed and all legal busines was conducted in the bishop's court. A bishop's court was called a Commissary Court when it was exercising the jurisdiction that had not been exercised by an archdeacon."