Palaeography Notes · Wills & Probate · Latin · March 2026
The opening words of every PCC probate clause — a formula unchanged for centuries
If you have ever downloaded a will from The National Archives — a PROB 11 document from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury — you will have noticed something that stops most people in their tracks. Before the will begins, and again after it ends, there is a block of dense, heavily abbreviated Latin in a legal hand quite different from the English text of the will itself. Most people ignore it, or assume it is too technical to bother with.
That is a shame. The Latin probate clauses are not decorative. They record the formal legal act that brought the will into force — who proved it, before whom, on what date, and in whose name. Once you know what the phrases mean, they become one of the most useful elements on the page.
The Prerogative Court of Canterbury was an ecclesiastical court — a church court, operating under canon law rather than common law. Until the Probate Act of 1857 transferred jurisdiction over wills to a new secular Court of Probate, the church had held authority over the proving of wills in England and Wales for centuries. Latin was the working language of the medieval church, and even as English displaced it in most areas of public life, it persisted in legal and ecclesiastical formulae long after it had ceased to be a living administrative tongue.
By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the bulk of surviving PCC wills were proved, Latin had become entirely formulaic in this context. The clerks who wrote these clauses were not composing fresh Latin. They were copying, with minor variations, the same phrases that had been used for generations. The formula was fixed by convention; individual words and names were slotted in as required.
This is both a challenge and an advantage. The abbreviations used in these clauses can be impenetrable at first glance, because the clerk was writing at speed for a professional audience who did not need the words spelled out. But once you recognise the underlying formula, the gaps fill themselves — you know what word must be there even when it has been reduced to its first two letters and a superscript.
The probate clauses were dropped from English will registration only in 1733, when an Act of Parliament required all legal proceedings in England to be conducted in English rather than Latin. After 1733, PCC wills carry a brief English probate memorandum instead. If your will is dated before 1733, expect Latin. If it is dated after 1733 and before 1858, expect English.
Every PCC probate clause follows the same basic structure. Here is a representative example from a mid-eighteenth-century will, transcribed in full and then broken down phrase by phrase.
And now word by word — which is where it becomes genuinely interesting.
Each section of the clause serves a distinct legal purpose — once you know the structure, it reads itself
| Latin phrase | Meaning and notes |
|---|---|
| Probatum fuit | Was proved. The opening two words of every PCC probate clause. Probatum from probare, to test or prove; fuit, was. This is the formal declaration that the will has been legally validated. |
| hujusmodi Testamentum | This Testament. Hujusmodi literally means "of this kind" — a standard formula meaning "the said" or "the present." The clerk is referring to the will just written above. |
| apud London | At London. Apud means at or in. PCC wills were always proved in London, usually at Doctors' Commons near St Paul's Cathedral — the college of ecclesiastical lawyers who practised in the church courts. |
| Tertio Idibus Septembris | On the third of the Ides of September — that is, the 11th of September. The Roman calendar divided each month by Kalends (1st), Nones (5th or 7th), and Ides (13th or 15th). Counting back from the Ides, tertio (third) gives the 11th. This is a date formula requiring knowledge of the Roman calendar to decode — see the table below. |
| Anno Domini Millesimo Septingentesimo Tricesimo | In the year of the Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty. Millesimo = thousandth, Septingentesimo = seven hundredth, Tricesimo = thirtieth. The year is always written in full in ordinal Latin, which is why it takes up an entire line. |
| coram Venerabili viro | Before the Venerable man. Coram means before or in the presence of. Venerabili viro is the standard honorific for a senior ecclesiastical judge — literally "venerable man." You may also see Venerabili et Egregio viro — Venerable and Distinguished man — for particularly senior judges. |
| Johanne Betterworth Legum Doctore | John Betterworth, Doctor of Laws. This names the judge. Legum Doctor — Doctor of Laws, abbreviated LL.D. — was the qualification held by all Doctors' Commons practitioners. John Betterworth (d.1751) was a prominent PCC judge active throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. Identifying the judge can help you date an undated document and understand its institutional context. |
| Curiæ Prerogativæ Cantuariensis | Of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. This confirms which court proved the will. The PCC had jurisdiction over estates with property in more than one diocese, or over the estates of notable individuals — which is why its records, held at The National Archives as the PROB series, contain such a rich cross-section of English society from the medieval period to 1858. |
| Commissario legittime Constituto | Commissary lawfully constituted. The Commissarius was the judge's formal title — an officer of the court empowered to act on its behalf. Legittime Constituto (lawfully constituted) was a standard formula confirming the judge's authority. |
| Juramento | Upon the oath of. This introduces the name of the person who appeared before the court to prove the will — the executor or executrix named in the will, who swore an oath to administer the estate faithfully. |
| Susannæ Vigor viduæ Relictæ et Executricis | Of Susanna Vigor, widow, Relict and Executrix. Here the name of the person proving the will appears in the genitive case (possessive), as does their title. Viduæ = widow (feminine). Relictæ = Relict, widow — a formal legal term for a surviving spouse. Executricis = Executrix, feminine of Executor. The feminine endings throughout confirm that the person swearing the oath is a woman. If the executor were a man, you would see Executoris (masculine genitive). |
| in Dicto Testamento nominatæ | Named in the said Testament. Dicto = said, the aforementioned. Nominatæ (feminine) = named. This confirms that the person taking the oath is the executor specifically appointed in the will above. |
| Cui commissa fuit Administratio | To whom was committed the Administration. Commissa fuit = was committed, entrusted. This is the heart of the probate grant: the formal legal conferring of authority to administer the estate. |
| omnium et Singulorum bonorum jurium et Creditorum defuncti | Of all and singular the goods, rights, and credits of the deceased. Omnium et Singulorum — all and singular — is a standard legal formula meaning every single item without exception. Bonorum = goods, chattels. Jurium = rights, legal entitlements. Creditorum = credits, debts owed to the estate. Defuncti (masculine) = of the deceased. Note: if the deceased were a woman, you would see defunctæ (feminine). |
| de bene et fideliter Administrando | To administer well and faithfully. The gerundive construction expresses obligation: the executor is bound to administer the estate properly. This was not a mere formality — failure to administer an estate faithfully could result in legal action against the executor. |
| eadem Ad Sacra Dei Evangelia jurat. | The same, having sworn upon the Holy Gospels of God. Eadem = the same (referring to the executrix). Ad Sacra Dei Evangelia = upon the Holy Gospels. Jurat = having sworn, or she swore. The physical act of swearing on the Gospels was the culminating moment of the probate hearing. Some clauses read Ad Quatuor Dei Evangelia — upon the Four Holy Gospels — making explicit that all four Gospel books were used. The full stop ends the entire clause. |
The date formula in PCC probate clauses is the single element most likely to defeat a first-time reader. The clerks used the Roman calendar system of Kalends, Nones, and Ides — a relic of classical Latin that survived in ecclesiastical documents long after it had disappeared from everyday use.
The principle is straightforward once you know it. Each month has three fixed points: the Kalends (always the 1st), the Nones (the 5th in most months, the 7th in March, May, July, and October), and the Ides (the 13th in most months, the 15th in March, May, July, and October). Dates are expressed by counting back from the next fixed point — and the fixed point itself counts as day one.
| Latin formula | Calculation | Actual date |
|---|---|---|
| Pridie Idibus Septembris | The day before the Ides of September (13th) | 12 September |
| Tertio Idibus Septembris | Three days before the Ides of September (counting the Ides as 1) | 11 September |
| Quinto Idibus Martii | Five days before the Ides of March (15th), counting the Ides as 1 | 11 March |
| Sextimo Idibus Octobris | Six days before the Ides of October (15th), counting the Ides as 1 | 10 October |
| Tertio Nonas Junii | Three days before the Nones of June (5th), counting the Nones as 1 | 3 June |
| Pridie Kalendas Januarii | The day before the Kalends of January (1st) | 31 December |
Pridie = the day before. Tertio, Quarto, Quinto, Sextimo = third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Always count the fixed point itself as day one, and count backwards.
One practical note: these date formulae tell you when the will was proved, not when it was signed. The signing date will be in the attestation clause of the English will text above — typically several weeks, months, or even years before the probate date. The gap between the two dates can itself be informative: a very long gap may suggest that the executor delayed proving the will, or that the estate was disputed.
Once the Latin is legible, the probate clause becomes a miniature archive in itself. From a single clause you can establish:
Useful for establishing a timeline of events after a death — when the estate was formally released to the executor, and therefore when bequests could legally begin to be paid.
The genitive endings tell you immediately whether the executor was male or female. Executoris = male; Executricis = female. If the named executor in the English will is unclear, the Latin can confirm it.
Viduæ confirms the executrix was a widow at the time of probate. A married woman proving her husband's will would typically appear as uxoris or conjugis. These details can help distinguish between women of the same name in genealogical research.
Defuncti (masculine) or defunctæ (feminine) in the phrase bonorum jurium et Creditorum defuncti/æ confirms the sex of the person who made the will. Occasionally useful when a name is ambiguous.
The named judge can be used to cross-reference dates. If a judge is known to have served between specific years, that gives you a bracket for when the will was proved even if the date formula is unclear. John Betterworth, for example, was active at Doctors' Commons from roughly the 1710s until his death in 1751.
Some clauses name the principal judge and then introduce a surrogate who actually conducted the hearing: Surrogato. This happens when the principal commissary delegated the hearing to a deputy. If you see a name followed by Surrogato, you are reading the name of the deputy, not the principal — which can matter if you are tracing the institutional history of a document.
Some PCC wills carry two Latin probate clauses rather than one. This is not an error. It reflects a feature of PCC probate practice whereby the court sometimes granted probate in two stages: a preliminary grant, and then a second formal grant once the executor had appeared and sworn the oath.
In some documents the first clause precedes the will text and the second follows it — which can give the impression that the first clause belongs to a different document altogether. This is particularly likely to cause confusion when the will has been copied into a register alongside other wills, with the tail end of the preceding entry and the first clause of the new entry appearing on the same page.
The first clause typically ends with the oath formula — jurat or juravit — and the name of the person taking the oath will appear in the genitive. The second clause, where it exists, usually names the executor more formally and contains the grant of administration — commissa fuit Administratio.
If a clause ends with a conjunction such as Et (And), it indicates that another entry begins immediately in the register — the entries run continuously in the probate register with no page break between them. The Et is the register clerk's way of signalling continuity.
The simplest test is to check the name in the genitive. If the name matches the executor named in the English will above, the clause belongs to your document. If it does not match — if it appears to be a different person entirely — you may be looking at the end of the preceding entry in the register.
PCC probate clerks abbreviated extensively. Standard contractions include a macron (a horizontal bar) over a vowel to indicate a dropped m or n — so Testamentū = Testamentum, and bonorū = bonorum. Superscript letters indicate further dropped syllables — Septembris = Septembris.
The word Prerogativæ is almost always abbreviated, often appearing as Prerog. or Prerogatæ. Cantuariensis (of Canterbury) frequently becomes Cantuar. or simply Cant. The judge's title Legum Doctore is often reduced to LL.D. or L.D.
The key to reading these abbreviations is the formula itself. Once you know what the full text should say, the abbreviated version resolves almost automatically — you are filling in letters you already know must be there, rather than deciphering from scratch. This is why familiarity with the standard formula is more valuable than any amount of Latin vocabulary: the formula is the key.
It is also worth knowing that the quality of the Latin in these clauses is not always impeccable. Clerks copied by hand at speed, errors crept in, and some contractions hardened into forms that are not strictly classical. Do not assume that an unexpected spelling or an unusual ending is a meaningful variant — it may simply be a copying error or a regional convention. The meaning of the formula is fixed regardless of minor orthographic variation.
Heritage Script offers professional transcription of PCC wills and probate records, including full translation and explanation of the Latin probate clauses. Every transcription includes palaeographer's notes explaining unusual terms, uncertain readings, and historical context.
Request a TranscriptionThe Latin probate example used throughout this post is drawn from Heritage Script's own transcription portfolio. PCC probate records are held at The National Archives, Kew, in the PROB series — PROB 11 contains the registered copy wills. The PROB 11 series is fully searchable and downloadable via the TNA online catalogue. For the Roman calendar, the standard reference remains Cheney's Handbook of Dates (Cambridge University Press), which includes comprehensive tables for converting Roman calendar dates to the modern calendar. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury ceased to function in 1858 when probate jurisdiction passed to the new Court of Probate under the Court of Probate Act 1857.
Filed under: Wills & Probate Latin PCC Palaeography How To 18th Century