Before 1857, the Church of Ireland, as the Established Church, had charge of all testamentary affairs. Consistorial Courts in each diocese were responsible for granting probate, that is, legally authenticating a will and conferring on the executors the power to administer the estate.

The wills and administration records of the Consistorial Courts were held locally in each diocese up to the abolition of the testamentary authority of the Church of Ireland in 1857. After that date, the National Archives began the slow process of collecting the original records and transcribing them into Will and Grant Books. The Office then indexed the wills and Administration Bonds, the sureties which the administrators had to produce as a guarantee that the estate would be properly administered. None of the Consistorial Courts had records of all of the wills or administrations they had dealt with. Very little earlier than the 17th century emerged, and the majority of the Courts appear to have had serious gaps before the mid-18th century.

All of the original wills and administrations in the National Archives were destroyed in 1922, along with almost all of the Will and Grant Books into which they had been transcribed. The only exceptions are the Will Books for Down (1850-58) and Connor (1818-20, 1853-58), and the Grant Books for Cashel (1840-45), Derry and Raphoe (1818-21), and Ossory (1848-58).

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