Death Duty Register showing the entry for the will of William Bell of Parsons Green, Fulham, Middlesex, Brewer. 1858. Cat ref: IR 26/2121 f.673.

Name and date of death of the deceased is given and the date of the Will. The details of the executor(s) and the court and date of probate, a rough valuation and details of correspondence

Legacies: details of the estate, personal monetary bequests and real estate (freehold) property, observations on the legacies, to whom in trust and for what purpose.

Legatee and Consanguinity: the beneficiaries included in the will and their relationship to the deceased.

Upon what Contingency … upon what conditions the legacies are bequeathed and procedures to be followed when the legatee dies - i.e. does the legacy pass to the legatee's heirs or to other defined persons? It can show what actually happened to an individual's estate until the final distribution of the estate and the successions of interest were completed. Annotations, usually in red, therefore, can appear in these registers for many decades (in a few cases even a century and more) after the grant of probate   

What deemed: the form of the bequest; whether an absolute gift (Abs) or an annuity and whether there are any contingency clauses to the bequest.

Value of Annuities and Bequests: value of actual bequests received by legatees or total value of annuities as computed for paying duty.

Rate of Duty and Date of Payment: percentage of bequest or annuity to be paid as duty according to the degree of consanguinity and date when payments of duty took place.

Instalment Annuity: value of instalments of duty paid on annuities - there were usually four such payments.

Total Duty: total duty paid on legacy.