List of Defuncts without Wills or Burial Record

This list of Defuncts was made by several volunteer workers from the microfilms of the Episcopal Wills in the Manx Museum - these are films EW13 to EW26. It was a byproduct of their indexing of the Episcopal Wills - unlike the wills in the Archideaconal court these wills were neither numbered nor paginated, they thus 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 allow wills to be more easily found.

Wills and decrees of administration for intestates, were handled by two courts which rotated around the sheadings - the Episcopal court and the Archideaconal court. The Episcopal Court met twice, 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.

Although lists of defuncts appear on both Archideaconal & Episcopal wills it does not appear that these names have been correlated against the corresponding list in the Archideaconal court - my own research on Arbory for the period 1701-1730 would indicate that, although the Episcopal list appears the more complete, additional information is often given in the other court. It is also stated that the names were checked against those of wills and burial registers - however I suspect that many are in one or both of these. Some names may have been mistranscribed in the original or misread by the indexers - the affairs of married women (especially widows) are often given under their maiden names; the will or decree usually indicating by the names of their children their married name - I would expect the same to have occurred with these names.

I have not yet had chance to personally check most of these names, however from work in the 1701-1730 period most of those defuncts without a will were indicated as paupers - if the absence of will or burial record was thus a sign of the economically insignificant then my first thought was that widows would probably dominate, in fact the sexes are about balanced with somewhat more males than females. As the original quoted the year of the court (it would appear old-style) the year should increase with increasing page number unless a book has been filmed out of sequence - however I suspect a few cases are mistranscriptions not recognised by the alphabetical order of the original. It is also interesting that no entry from EW16-EW21 is present.

I have split the names between the various parishes - the notes are generally my comment.

Andreas

There is a gap in the Burial Register for Andreas from 1685 to 1702 so a study of defuncts & wills would provide a way of filling some of the gap.

Arbory

The Arbory burial registers pre 1729 are missing - examination of the wills is probably the only approach to gaining some information about date of deaths.

Ballaugh

The Ballaugh burial registers are deficient for 1676 to 1695

Braddan/Douglas

Bride

The earliest surviving Burial register for Bride starts in 1693 .

German

[note there are significant gaps, in the baptisms from 1680 to 1695, in the marriages and burials between 1690 and 1695]

Jurby

Lezayre

Lonan

The earliest burial register for Lonon starts 1708

Malew

Marown

Maughold

Michael

Onchan

Patrick

Rushen

Santan