From the beginning Henry VI seems to have intended to erect in the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Nicholas a peculiar jurisdiction, independent of Cambridge University. To this end he procured no less than nine papal bulls from Pope Eugenius IV, dated 29 November 1445, exempting the College from the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop and Archdeacon of Ely, the Chancellor of the University and all other judges ordinary, and placing it under the sole jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln. No other college in Oxford or Cambridge claimed such a jurisdiction.
There are in all 221 wills and letters of administration in the Ledger Books at King's, spread over nearly 350 years of probate jurisdiction. The first recorded exercise of probate jurisdiction by the Provost took place on 22 February 1451/2 when the 1449 will of a William Roskyn was proved. At first business was slow, only fourteen wills in the fifteenth century. In the next century things picked up, though there were never more than eight wills proved per decade. The last will is that of Edmund Holt Esquire, late Senior Fellow of King's, proved in 1794.
Why did people want to make use of the College jurisdiction in the first place? Convenience for those living in the precincts was no doubt part of it, as perhaps was cost, though we do not know what the Provost charged for his services. Many of those whose wills were proved in King's wanted to remember individuals connected with the College, or the College itself, in their bequests, or to take advantage of Chapel burial and post-mortem masses and prayers, before the Reformation swept all that away.
The most important people whose wills were proved in King's were six Provosts; they lived very well by Cambridge standards in palatial housing on King's Parade. Most spectacular of all Provosts' wills was that of Sir Thomas Page, made 3 November 1680. He left lands in Harrow to relatives, and many valuable cups and jewels to Fellows. The most intriguing item was in a codicil, leaving the College a cabinet of curiosities with a huge bezoar stone, three pieces of porcupine stone, and the skeleton of a salamander, all from the East Indies. Alas there is no trace now in King's of Sir Thomas Page's cabinet.
Bequests of clothing and of beds are the most common sorts of mobile property represented in the King's wills; gowns of various colours and feather beds go to relatives or sometimes to fellow scholars, but books and musical instruments also turn up quite often. Most often, though, we see in these bequests the desire to be remembered by friends.
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