" Modern wills," he repeats, " are copied at length into vol-
umes, by the present Registrar, a practice which I regret is not
adopted at York, Lincoln, Lichfield, Winchester, and other
places I have visited. If wills of an earlier date than that of
the enrolment books are required to be taken out of the office
for production in any Court of Law, &c., an examined copy
made for the purpose, is deposited in its place during its tempo-
rary removal from the Registry. The principal portion of the
wills are deposited in a dry, but not a fire-proof building, in
good repair, called the Abbey Gateway ; where, during the



THE DOOM. OP ENGLISH WILLS. 239



office hours, two clerks are constantly kept at work in copying
wills that come in. These are kept in boxes, arranged upon
shelves with just sufficient space to admit them, like drawers ;
and upon the top of the wills is a sheet of .pasteboard fitting the
box, as a further protection from dust. The wills are alphabeti-
cally arranged in the boxes, which are of uniform size, and con-
Uin more or less letters ; the first box for 1835, for instance,
contains the wills of testators whose names commence with A.
or B. The wills of each letter are placed sepiaratelyj and are
divided into packets of one month each, so that the exact date
of Probate being known, the will is found immediately.
