About Sir Arthur Vicars, Index to the Prerogative Wills of Ireland 1536-1810

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This important book is well known to Irish genealogists. It contains an index to over 40,000 Irish wills, most of which were destroyed in the 1922 explosion at the Public Record Office in Dublin. As a consequence this book is especially important as the only surviving evidence of what did exist at one time. This index gives the name of every person who left a will, their address, rank or occupation and the date of probate.

The Prerogative Court was the central court for the proving of wills and grants of probate and administration. It dealt with wills which represented assets greater than £5 in more than one Diocese. Less than this and the will was proved in the Diocesan Consistoral Court. There were around 30 of these. The only other courts were the ones set up after the process was taken into the hands of the civil authorities in 1858 when district and central registries are established and the Diocesan and Prerogative Courts abolished.

Vicars' based his work on the abstracts to the original wills compiled by Sir William Betham, and is the only index to his voluminous collections of abstracts and extracts in existence.

However, this collection is doubly important because we have included the never-before-published supplement compiled in 1914 to correct errors and omissions in Vicars' work. 

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