Definition
Bona notabilia (Latin/Law Latin: "notable goods") is a term from English ecclesiastical probate law referring to a deceased person's personal property of sufficient value to trigger elevated jurisdictional rules for the granting of administration. Historically, the threshold was set at five pounds sterling.
The term's practical significance lay in its jurisdictional consequences: when a decedent left goods qualifying as bona notabilia spread across more than one diocese, ordinary probate jurisdiction — which would normally rest with the bishop of the diocese where the goods were located — gave way to the jurisdiction of the metropolitan (the archbishop). The metropolitan's authority prevented the confusion and inefficiency that would result from appointing multiple administrators in multiple dioceses simultaneously.
Where all of a decedent's goods lay within a single diocese, no bona notabilia issue arose; the local ordinary handled probate exclusively.
Common Confusion
Bona notabilia is sometimes loosely grouped with other "bona" terms from Roman and civil law — bona fide, bona vacantia, bona peritura — as if they formed a coherent doctrinal family. They do not. Each "bona" phrase addresses a distinct legal concept. Bona notabilia is specific to English ecclesiastical probate administration and has no operative connection to the bona fide purchaser doctrine or to property law concepts bearing similar Latin labels.
Why It Matters in Research
This is primarily a historical term with no operative force in modern American or English law. Researchers are most likely to encounter bona notabilia in:
— Pre-twentieth-century English probate materials and ecclesiastical court records, where jurisdictional disputes between diocesan ordinaries and metropolitan courts were significant and sometimes extensively litigated.
— Early American colonial and state probate records that borrowed English ecclesiastical probate forms before secular administration was fully established. Some colonial jurisdictions replicated the diocesan/metropolitan framework in modified form; the term may appear in procedural recitals even where the ecclesiastical structure had no direct American counterpart.
— Treatises on the law of executors and administrators from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Blackstone's Commentaries and Williams on Executors (cited by both Black's and Bouvier's) are the primary organizing texts; researchers working backward from those citations will find the doctrine treated at length.
The five-pound threshold is a fixed historical artifact. Do not attempt to translate or adjust it. Modern English probate jurisdiction is governed by secular statute and the concept of bona notabilia as an operational rule has been obsolete for well over a century.
Corpus trap: the word "notable" in older probate documents does not always signal this doctrine. Scribes sometimes used "notable" descriptively. Context — particularly any reference to metropolitan authority, diocesan overlap, or jurisdictional transfer — is necessary to confirm the technical sense.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the essentials: bona notabilia are goods of sufficient value (the five-pound floor) that, when distributed across multiple dioceses, shift probate jurisdiction upward to the metropolitan. Black's and Bouvier's share nearly identical language and draw from the same two sources — Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Comm. 509) and Rolle's Abridgment — reflecting how thoroughly the concept was settled by the time these dictionaries were compiled. Burrill adds the important clarification that if all goods lie within one diocese at the time of death, the ordinary's jurisdiction is exclusive and no jurisdictional elevation occurs.
None of the three dictionaries addresses the American reception of this doctrine, nor do they note that the ecclesiastical probate framework underlying the term had been substantially dismantled in England by the mid-nineteenth century (the Probate Act 1857 transferred ecclesiastical probate jurisdiction to a new civil court). Researchers should treat these entries as describing the historical English system, not a living doctrine.
Bouvier's entry is notable for trailing off mid-sentence on the value threshold, suggesting an incomplete transcription in available editions. Williams on Executors (7th ed.) is cited as the fuller authority on the valuation rules; researchers needing precision on the threshold's historical operation should consult that treatise directly rather than relying on Bouvier's truncated account.
Jurisdictional Note
Bona notabilia has no operative role in any current American jurisdiction. The ecclesiastical court system that gave the concept its procedural meaning never took root in the United States. Modern multi-state estate administration questions are resolved through ancillary administration statutes and uniform acts, not through any descendant of this doctrine.