Of course the registrar never came near his registry:  his duties were discharged by three deputies.  Not one penny, moreover, beyond what was absolutely necessary did he expend on the registry itself.  Such a hole as it was!  Cribbed, cabined and confined were the clerks who ran the reverend sinecurist’s business in one of the most extraordinary rabbit-warrens, to use the epithet Bethell, Lord (Chancellor) Westbury, applied to it in the writer’s hearing.  In Great Knight Rider street—­a name derived from the days of the Knights Templar—­was a dingy passage-way leading into a yet dingier little court.  Passing up a short flight of steps, you found yourself in a large room, with deep alcoves furnished with shelves, on which, above and on all sides, were ranged huge volumes with massive clasps.  “What are all these books?” inquired a youthful visitor—­“old Bibles?” “No, sir; they’re testaments,” was a waggish official’s reply.  They are, in fact, copies of wills.  The originals are deemed too precious for exhibition except on special application, and the stranger who pays his shilling only sees a copy.  Formerly, unless a searcher knew exactly when a will was proved, the process of finding it was very troublesome, because he had to search down indexes in Old English character arranged in order of date only; but now the registers have been put into alphabetical form.

The great change in Doctors’ Commons took place in 1858, when the Probate Act came into operation.  This was a very sweeping measure, which at a blow superseded the whole system of ecclesiastical courts, so far at least as wills were concerned.  For them it substituted a Court of Probate, with jurisdiction over the whole of England.  Attached to this court are about forty registries for wills.  That in London is called the Principal Registry.  A will must either be proved in the district in which a man dies or in the Principal Registry.  The Principal Registry is a very large office, at the head of which are four registrars, who are also registrars of the Divorce Court, over which the judge of the Court of Probate presides, being styled “judge ordinary” of this latter.  There are about forty registries scattered about the country, in most cases in places where formerly ecclesiastical courts existed for the proving of wills.  The value of these registrarships ranges from three hundred to fifteen hundred pounds.  They are all in the gift of the judge of the court, whose patronage is worth about sixty thousand pounds a year, and may be reckoned the best in England, inasmuch as he holds it continuously, whilst the lord chancellor and other political officers merely hold their patronage for the few years they may chance to continue in office.  Moreover, the judge of the Court of Probate, not being a political officer, has no political pressure brought to bear upon him in the distribution of his patronage, and can dispense it precisely as he pleases.  The registrars must, by the terms of the act of Parliament, be barristers, solicitors, or clerks who have served five years in the Principal Registry.