Sample wills

The wills below are pages from the PCC wills held in the series PROB 11, as copied by the PCC clerks. They show the typical styles of text throughout the years. The examples for the wills of Susanna Smith and Jane Austen below, also demonstrate and explain the basic structure of a will pointing out areas such as the preamble, naming of the testator or testatrix, naming of the executor or executrix, the beneficiaries, dates, names of witnesses, codicils, memorandum and probate (or probatum in Latin). There is also an example of a sentence.

Reading the wills

The National Archives and DocumentsOnline do not provide a transcription or translation service. If you have any problems reading a will you have bought, or need a translation of a Latin will, The National Archives' website contains a list of independent researchers who can be contacted. It also has a list of specialists for the transcription and translation of records in Latin. If you want to learn how to read old handwriting, you can try our online palaeography tutorial, which will correct your transcriptions line by line and offer helpful hints.

Please note that most of the wills below are just examples rather than complete wills. Also these images are in PDF format, so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to download the image. If you don't already have it installed, it is available free from Adobe's website.

Examples of wills

14th century: Thomas Kennardesle 2 December 1391 (Catalogue reference: PROB 11/1)		15th century: William Mavehy 27 January 1479 (Catalogue reference: PROB 11/7)
16th century: John Yardley 2 July 1522 (Catalogue reference: PROB 11/20)		17th century: Henry Purcell 7 December 1695 (Catalogue reference: PROB 11/429)
18th century: Susanna Smith 19 July 1709 (Catalogue reference: PROB 11/510)		19th century: Jane Austen 10 September 1817 (Catalogue reference: PROB 11/1596)

Example of a Sentence

View the Sentence of William Stotevile 16 July 1650 (Catalogue reference: PROB 11/213)

A sentence is a judgement about a disputed will given at the conclusion of litigation. A sentence does not necessarily contain the same details as a will so we have differentiated between the two.