THE ENGLISH LAW COURTS. VII. THE PROBATE, DIVORCE AND ADMIRALTY DIVISION. THE Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division exercises the jurisdiction for merly vested in the Probate Court, the High Court of Admiralty, the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. We shall say some thing about each of these tribunals in turn. The Court of Probate was established in 1857 by a statute (20 and 21 Vict., ch. 77) which transferred all the jurisdictional author ity of the ecclesiastical courts in respect of the granting and revocation of probate of wills and letters of administration in England to a secular tribunal sitting in London, and presided over by a judge ranking with the judges of the superior courts of common law, and as judge ordinary of the Divorce Court, taking precedence next after the Lord Chief Baron. The institution of the Probate Court removed two grave difficulties in the adminis tration of the law testamentary. Formerly its function of determining the person to whom the administration of the estate of a deceased person was to be committed was exercised by different courts throughout the country, the question depending mainly on whether the deceased had personal estate {bona notabilia) within the jurisdiction of the particular courts. This rule gave rise to complication and uncertainty. It was abro gated by the new regime, under which the Probate Court, by means of registries in Lon don and in the provinces, could grant pro bate and letters of administration in all cases where a person died leaving personal estate in this country. Again, under the old law the probate of a will was binding only on a testator's personal estate, even if he had ap pointed an executor and formally devised his lands by thewill. Theresultwas that the same testament might be held valid as regards per sonal estate in the ecclesicastical courts, and
invalid as regards real estate in an action by the heir at law against the devisee. Under the act of 1857, this mischief was met by making the heir at law or other persons interested in the real estate parties to pro ceedings for probate, and thereby binding them by the decree pronounced by the court. The business of the Probate Court was partly common form or non-contentious, and partly contentious. The common form business consisted of the grant of probate or adminis tration in uncontested cases, and of ques tions for the determination of the court on points of practice — as, for example, wheth er documents are sufficiently executed to be entitled to probate, whether obliterations, etc., are of such a character as to prevent a will from being proved, and whether a lost will was lost under such circumstances as to give rise to a presumption that it had been revoked. The contentious business included due execution, testamentary capacity, undue influence, fraud, and other matters of the same litigious description. The Court for Divorce and Matrimonial causes, established by the statute 20 and 21 Vict., ch. 85, deserves a longer notice. Down to 1857 the marriage compact was by Eng lish law indissoluble, except by the Legisla ture. The Reformers had held and inculcated a similar doctrine, deduced from their repudi ation of the Roman Catholic doctrine that marriage was a sacrament, and one or two persons were divorced a metisa ct thoro in the sixteenth century. But in the year 1601, in the case of Sir J. Foljambe, the question came directly before the Court of Star Cham ber, which decided that marriage, though no longer a sacrament, retained all the incidents of one, and therefore was not dissoluble; and so an injured husband or wife had no means
