Post by Charles EllsonThey weren't classified by county rather than by religious boundaries
and have never been a UK matter, remaining under the three separate
legal jurisdictions in the UK (England and Wales, Scotland, Northern
Ireland).
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Sussex_Probate_Records
gives some information and links regarding wills of a defunct in
Sussex.
Ancestry has indexing and images of Prerogative Court of Canterbury
wills in the National Archives series PROB 11; if their indexing is
complete (these seem to be a recent addition) then probably either
there wasn't a will or the deceased might have had possessions within
the scope of the Prerogative Court of York :-
https://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/holdings/guides/research-guides/probate-courts/
Only a small proportion of wills were proved in the two prerogative
courts. Most wills were proved in the consistory court for the diocese
or the archdeacon's court for the appropriate archdeaconry. Findmypast
has an index of the Consistory Court of Chichester, covering the 16th
and 17th centuries. I'd start by looking there.
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/sussex-chichester-consistory-court-wills-index-1482-1800
There's a printed calendar of wills proved in the Archdeaconry Court of
Lewes (covering East Sussex) for 1541-1659, together with a handful of
other more obscure jurisdictions in the county:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101067288660;view=1up;seq=7
I can't immediately find anything similar for the Archdeaconry Court of
Chichester.
Richard