Reconstructed Arbory Burials 1701-1730

The Arbory Parish Registers are seriously deficient - no marriages or burials before 1729 and a major gap in baptisms between 1675 and 1729 - these dates are too early for any duplicates to be found in Bishop's transcripts. There are also no lists of confirmations.

The actual register is a single volume, recently rebound, in which several sections of earlier registers have been incorporated. The opening paragraph to the early baptisms states that this is a copy made c.1729 but only the first set of leaves are present. It would appear that a complete register has been lost at some period.

The preface on the first page reads:

A true coppy of the register book of Kk Arbory
beginning from the ministry of Sr John Crellin &
continued thro' the time of the Reverend Mr Samuel
Robinson & Mr Robt Parr the succeeding viccars wch
is faithfully extracted & compar'd with the originals
by Edward Moore of Douglas to whom the curacy of
this parish was committed by the right reverend
father in God Thomas lord bishop of Sodor & Man
Anno domini 1723

Most wills of the period were dictated on the death bed and usually contain within them the date of death, such wills and decrees of administration for intestates, were handled by two courts which rotated around the sheadings - the episcopal court (usually headed by a Vicar General though the Bishop - Thomas Wilson at this period - would become involved in serious cases) and the Archideaconal court. Although intestates could be handled in either court, at this period most seemed to be handled by the Episcopal Court which met two, or more usually, three times a year whereas the Archideaconal court met once.

Prior to the wills and administrations is a page giving the date of the court, lists of jurymen and names of the defuncts - against each name would generally be a '+' or a '-' — the '+' indicating that the defunct was handled by that court (ie a will or decree will follow), the '-' indicating that the defunct would be handled by the other court. A third category of defuncts for which no mark is given are either those whose affairs will be dealt with in a later court or for those, generally indicated as paupers, for whom no property needs be considered - sometimes these lists of defuncts are the only mention of the death of such individuals. The list of defuncts in the Episcopal courts is generally the fuller but sometimes additional information is given in the Archideaconal court list (eg an additional 'als'). The usual dates for these courts were May/June, Oct/Nov and February (remember the year then started on March 25) - the court circuit is indicated as suffices -1,-2 or -3 to the year. If no death date can be determined then the date of the first appearance of the name in a court record is given indicated with the prefix 'by'.

The handling of married names is not consistent - widows (possibly those long since widowed) are often given under their maiden names; the will or decree usually indicating by the names of their children their married name. Those where the will indicates a different name than that in the list are shown '*'d in the table below.

The notes on the wills are a summary of people mentioned in the will - all too often the name of a spouse is not given, sometimes this is included in an attached inventory or account - several of the wills are transcribed elsewhere.

It should be remembered that Manx law was considerably different from English law - the two parties in a marriage could both have wills and leave property independently, the children of the deceased were generally the executors unless the will explicitly gave this task to the spouse. Any descent of property was fixed by law and thus such property is seldom mentioned in a will, though purchased property (as opposed to inherited property) could be disposed of by will. As the heir at law was fixed it was often the case that the other children were made executors of the personal property. Parties could be excluded by the legal device of bequeathing them sixpence or more. If any child was under age (14 years) a supervisor from the deceased spouse's family (usually an uncle) was appointed to act for the child's interest.

The LDS film number is given for ease of reference; this is derived from that given by Brian Lawson in his index to the wills, for the Archideaconal wills these correspond to the Manx museum films in the RB series, however the Episcopal films in the EW series would appear to somewhat different. The Archideaconal wills, arranged by parish in the usual clockwise order, are numbered, those in the Episcopal court, also arranged in parish order are not so numbered. A new index to these Episcopal wills was prepared over several years by volunteer workers and they assigned page numbers to the pages as found on the Museum Microfilm, however the actual pages are not labelled so the page reference acts as a relative reference to more easily find wills.

The Manorial Roll for Arbory may provide additional information.

[note this is work in progress - some of the earlier Archideaconal wills remain to be summarised.]

Text missing or unclear in the wills is indicated ' []' - sometimes I have interpolated my guess at the reading. dau-i-l = daughter in law etc, gdau = granddaughter etc