HIGH COURT OF MADRAS. 



139 



and the nature of the case might require, preferably to the 

 Eegistrar of such Court, and all other persons to whom such 

 executor or administrator, or persons entitled as aforesaid, 

 would have had a preferable claim if personally resident 

 within the jurisdiction of the said Court ; and that where any 

 such letters ad colligenda or of administration should have 

 been granted to the Registrar of such Court, and application 

 should be afterwards made by any person or persons so 

 appointed as aforesaid for the revocation thereof, in order to 

 grant other letters to such person or persons, the letters so 

 granted to such Eegistrar should be revoked, unless it should 

 appear to the Court that there had been unreasonable delay, 

 either in the transmission of the authority under which such 

 application was made or in making such application. 



In 1849 it was deemed expedient to disconnect the 

 administration of the estates of British subjects dying intes- 

 tate in Bengal from the Office of Ecclesiastical Registrar of 

 the Supreme Court in that Presidency, and to appoint an 

 Administrator-General there, which was accordingly done 

 by Act YII of 1849. This Act was extended to Madras 

 and Bombay by Act II of 1850, but with the proviso that 

 the two offices of Ecclesiastical Registrar and Administra- 

 tor-General might be held at Fort St. George and Bombay 

 respectively by the same person. Then followed Act VIII 

 of 1855, by which it was enacted (section 6) that the two 

 offices of Ecclesiastical Registrar and Administrator- General 

 might be held by the then Administrator-General at Fort 

 St. George, but with the exception that no person then holding 

 the office of Administrator- General, or thereafter to be 

 appointed to such office in any of the Presidencies, should 

 hold the office of Ecclesiastical Registrar. No very material 

 change has since been made, though Act VIII of 1855 was 

 repealed and re-enacted with some modifications by Act 

 XXIV of 1867, which was in its turn treated in the same way 

 by Act IV of 1874, amended by Act IX of 1881. 



