The Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) was theoretically, and for the most part in practice, the only authority in England able to issue and register grants of probate and administration required by the citizens of England and Wales who died at home or abroad leaving wills or having assets worth more than £5. Fortunately for the family historian, this meant that a will drawn up by an English person anywhere in the world required legitimization by the PCC in London if the testator wished to pass on any property he might own in the "mother country." Less fortunately for the genealogist, fewer than one in a hundred was well enough endowed to draw up a will or to benefit from the ministrations of the London court. However, the survival in London of well over 2,000 wills relating to temporary or permanent inhabitants of North America has ensured that they, their relations and descendants have not only found a permanent place in historical records but have a provable link to English ancestry.