On 29/12/14 15:10, Richard Smith wrote: > Can anyone explain what the last number in a reference like PROB > 11/308/246 actually means? I know that "PROB 11" denotes PCC will > registers, and 308 is the piece number, in this case the volume > containing quires 53-107 of register "Laud" (1662). I had assumed 246 > was a quire number, a page number, or the entry number, but I don't > think it can be. Starting at the first page of volume PROB 11/308, the > first ten wills are: > > Richard Norton [PROB 11/308/6] > Elizabeth Nevill [PROB 11/308/50] > John Ormesby [PROB 11/308/12] > John Oxlard [PROB 11/308/22] > John Orisby [PROB 11/308/3] > John Olive [PROB 11/308/41] > Dorothy Old [PROB 11/308/15] > Hugh Potter [PROB 11/308/43] > Anne Porter [PROB 11/308/4] > Mary Palmer [PROB 11/308/31] > > I can see no logic in the the numbering at all! Chronological order in which they were handled by the probate office? -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk

On 29/12/14 15:59, Ian Goddard wrote: > On 29/12/14 15:10, Richard Smith wrote: >> Can anyone explain what the last number in a reference like PROB >> 11/308/246 actually means? I know that "PROB 11" denotes PCC will >> registers, and 308 is the piece number, in this case the volume >> containing quires 53-107 of register "Laud" (1662). I had assumed 246 >> was a quire number, a page number, or the entry number, but I don't >> think it can be. Starting at the first page of volume PROB 11/308, the >> first ten wills are: >> >> Richard Norton [PROB 11/308/6] >> Elizabeth Nevill [PROB 11/308/50] >> John Ormesby [PROB 11/308/12] >> John Oxlard [PROB 11/308/22] >> John Orisby [PROB 11/308/3] >> John Olive [PROB 11/308/41] >> Dorothy Old [PROB 11/308/15] >> Hugh Potter [PROB 11/308/43] >> Anne Porter [PROB 11/308/4] >> Mary Palmer [PROB 11/308/31] >> >> I can see no logic in the the numbering at all! > > Chronological order in which they were handled by the probate office? Yes, checking the probate date on those wills, that seems to be the case. But it's a crazy way of doing it. How do you go about finding a will using that number? That's not the order they appear in the original registers of wills. You can't unless you have whatever lookup table The National Archives uses internally. Obviously that's fine if you use The National Archives' website (and pay £3.30 to view it), but what if you use another provider like Ancestry.com? If they haven't transcribed the name well enough to find it (or at least the similarly enough to The National Archives), your only option is to page through the volume. The same would be true if you had physical access to the actual bound volume. It's generally accepted good practice when citing a source to use something like a page number rather than an opaque reference number. The National Archives even say this on their own website. "A brief citation usually contains the following information: [...] the internal identifier: details of the folio, page, docket, membrane or other number within the piece." So why do they not follow their own advice when it comes to PCC wills. The folio number is stamped on each recto side, and quire numbers are written on every 8th folio. That makes them both easy to use. If we applied The National Archives' own guidance, the correct way of citing PROB 11/308/246 would be PROB 11/308, f156 r. But The National Archives catalogue provides no way of discovering the folio or page number short of purchasing the will. And by not showing quire numbers, The National Archives make it impossible to look up wills using the citation style prevalent in the 19th or early 20th century. An author a hundred years ago would have cited PROB 11/308/246 as "P.C.C. 73 Laud", where 73 is the quire number and Laud the name used for the year, 1662. Not quite as easy to use as the page number as you might need to look over up to eight pages to find the will when sat in front of the volume (or viewing it on Ancestry.com), but impossible to look up on The National Archives catalogue. Finally, I note that if you actually buy the image of a will from The National Archives website, nowhere on the file you receive does it include the will number (in probate order). Instead it says PROB 11/308, image number 607, though it does have the page number 156 visible on the first side. Obviously moaning here isn't going to change how The National Archive index their wills, but perhaps I can draw attention to the fact that simply citing PROB 11/308/246 is pretty unsatisfactory, even if accompanied by the testator's name, David Urry. (For this particular will, I've submitted a correction to Ancestry's transcription so hopefully it will now turn up in a search.) Where at all possible, also include the page or quire number, or better, both. Richard