In a message dated 20/09/2007 19:08:35 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: The manuscript calendars are available on microfilm at the NDFHS Library at Bolbec Hall, Newcastle. The Calendars available in Bolbec Hall are the National Probate Calendars, covering 1858 to recently, and are listings of each Will proved with "official" details such as the name, address and date of death of the testator, the regional Probate Court that handled it, the value of the estate and the names of the executors. They do not give details of "who got what". Origins Network has indexed all the records of the Peculiar of the Archbishop of York in Hexham and Hexhamshire 1593-1602, and the Peculiar of the Prebend of Tockerington 1741-1744 in it's York Peculiars Probate Index That should be "Thockrington", a small parish in Northumberland, and not Tockerington, as you have put. The status of Thockrington has never been adequately explained, but it has been regarded as a Peculair for centuries now, whatever the official position should have been. Fortunately it is a tiny parish, with very few Wills relating to property there. I was once taken very much to task by a local academic historian for referring to Hexhamshire as a "Peculiar". Officially it is not: it is a "Special Jurisdiction" of the Archbishop of York. Don't ask me what the difference is between a Peculiar and a Special Jurisdiction! I would guess that it probably has something to do with the Archbishop being at the top of the tree anyway: Peculiars usually come under some person one would not normally expect to have been concerned with administering them - an Archdeacon, not necessarily the local one, for instance, or some other church official. In the case of Hexham, one would have expected it to have come under the Bishop of Durham and, failing him (ie during interregna), the Archbishop of York, so making it the Archbishop anyway is not all that "peculiar" and a different name had to be found. But that's just my guess! It is probably also worth mentioning that the term "Hexhamshire" has had two different meanings. In the context of the present topic, it is the whole of the parishes of Hexham, Allendale and St John Lee, with their various dependent Parochial Chapelries (ie the district given to the Archbishop during the days of Northumbrian independence by the Queen of King Edwin, its first Christian King). In modern parlance Hexhamshire (what Hexham people often refer to just as "the shire") is effectively that part of the old Hexham parish which lies outside the town, or township, of Hexham itself, in particular, Hexham High Quarter and Hexham Low Quarter, districts which for church purposes came under Whitley Chapel. Geoff Nicholson