182 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd g, No 62., Mar. 7. '57. 



erasure of two letters, and by inserting upon that erasure 

 three other letters instead. 



" In the case of Doe dem. King and White v. Farran, 

 which was tried at Chelmsford at the Lent Assizes in 

 1829, the plaintiffs produced a certificate from the regis- 

 ter of Linton as evidence of the baptism of Ann King, and 

 obtained a verdict. After the trial the defendant's at- 

 tornies referred to the transcript of the register at Ely, 

 and a forgery in the parish register was thus discovered, 

 some person having interpolated this baptism between 

 the last entry on the page and the minister's signature. 

 A rule for anew trial was thereupon obtained, and the 

 defendant thus preserved her family estates. A true bill 

 was found against the delinquent who committed the 

 forgery. He immediately left the kingdom, and has not 

 since returned. 



" In the case of Lloyd and Passingham in 1809, (IG 

 Ves. 59.) Lord Eldon refers to a forgery in the register of 

 Saint Pancras. His lordship remarks, ' The conclusion 

 upon the affidavits is that Kendry had gone into the 

 church with Young (the parish clerk), had erased by 

 pumice-stone and india-rubber (those articles being left 

 upon the altar!) some entrj' in the book, and inserted an 

 entry of the burial of Elizabeth Lloyd and the birth of her 

 daughter, (Robert Passingham standing outside;) but 

 upon inspection it is impossible not to see that the opera- 

 tion must have been difficult, as no less than three pages 

 must have been obliterated, the names collected on a 

 separate paper, and those three pages must have been 

 written over.' Unfortunately no transcript had been re- 

 turned to the bishop's registrj', and the consequence was 

 a succession of suits at law to the grievous injury of the 

 parties, whose estates were attempted to be taken from 

 them. 



" On the death of the Earl of Peterborough in 1814, it 

 was clearly understood that, with the exception of the 

 Barony of Mordaunt, all his titles became extinct. An 

 attempt was made to make out a claim to this title 

 through an Osmond Mordaunt, who it is believed was 

 killed at the battle of the Boyne. To effect this, it was 

 made to appear that the individual in question had really 

 been married, and a marriage was accordingly entered in 

 the register of Stoke Fleming, in Devonshire, between 

 ' The Hon. Osmond Mordaunt and Mary Hyne, 4 Dec 

 1689 ; ' and in the following year a baptism was inserted 

 of 'Tho^ the Son of the Hon. Osmond Mordaunt and 

 Mary his wife.' Search was made at Exeter for the 

 transcript of the register of Stoke Fleming, but it was not 

 to he found. Upon close inspection however of the parish 

 register, it was found that a leaf of entries bad been cut 

 out of it, and replaced by a blank leaf from the end of the 

 book, upon which the forged entry had been written, and 

 then fastened in. Being detected in Devonshire, the 

 parties then transferred their operations to the parish of 

 St. Peter, Cornhill, where it was made to appear that this 

 Osmond Mordaunt had on the 2oth of June, 1673, mar- 

 ried Mary Bulger. This entry was inserted by two 

 strangers, who applied in Jul}', 1829, to see the register, 

 and were a long time in the vestry with the clerk, who, 

 when thej' went away, boasted of having found what 

 they wanted, and of their liberality in giving him half-a- 

 sovereign. In this case also there was no transcript of 

 the register to assist in the detection of the forgeiy. 



" In the ca.se of Oldham and Eborall, being an issue 

 from the Court of Chancery, tried before the Lord Chief 

 Justice, in 1829, the question was, which of two mar- 

 riages was the valid one; — one marriage was by license 

 at Birmingham in 1712, and the other by banns (between 

 the same parties) at Great Packington in 1714, and in- 

 volved the legitimacy of a child born in the intermediate 

 time. The marriage of 1712 was not to be found in the 



registry of Birmingham ; but upon reference to the Bishop's 

 registry, at Lichfield, it loas found in the transcript which 

 had been sent to the Bishop in 1713. Upon comparison of 

 this transcript with the original register, it was dis- 

 covered that three entries in the latter had been oblite- 

 rated by some liquid, one of them being no doubt the 

 marriage in question. The jury were of this opinion, and 

 by their verdict established the first marriage. 



" The case of Ansdell v. Gompertz was a case depending 

 on the legitimacy of two brothers, Isaac Joseph Isaac, 

 and Henry Gulling Isaac, and involving the title to 

 nearly 100,000/., in the Court of Chancerj% In order to 

 prove the legitimacy of the eldest (who was baptized in 

 1781, and whose parents were married in 1783), an entry 

 of his baptism in 1784 was produced, which had been 

 forged by Mr. Hodge, the clergj'man of the parish. This, 

 however, was ultimately abandoned ; and it was then at- 

 tempted to be proved that Henry Gulling Isaac was 

 legitimate, but no register of his baptism was to be found. 

 An issue was directed by the Court of Chancery to try 

 whether Henry Gulling Isaac was legitimate*: it was 

 tried before Mr. Baron Gumej', at Exeter, in March 1837, 

 when the jury found for the defendants. When the matter 

 came before the Chancellor again, he characterised the 

 case as opening a scene of the most wicked conspiracy, 

 perjury, forgery, and fraud, which it had ever been his 

 misfortune to witness in that court. ' I see a party,' said 

 his lordship, ' by means of forged registers, fabricated in 

 the handwriting of Mr. Hodge, a clergyman, by means 

 of false evidence procured, supporting those registers, 

 and swearing first to the legitimacy of Isaac, and 

 then to the legitimacy of Henri/, both of which I am 

 quite satisfied are false; and by an agreement between 

 tliem, in the absence of, and keeping out of the way the 

 individual who was alone interested in disputing the le- 

 gitimacy of the two children, I find this court has been 

 imposed upon, and an order obtained procuring the trans- 

 fer of, I think, somewhere between 50,000Z. and 60,000/. to 

 parties who have no title whatever to it. I think when 

 these facts come to my knowledge, I should be ill dis- 

 charging my dut}', if I did not put these transactions into 

 a course of inquiry elsewhere.' 



" In the Fendall case in 1839, a committee was ap- 

 pointed to inquire into ' the extraordinary mutilation of 

 inscriptions on tombstones, and interpolations in the pa- 

 rish register of Marylebone.' Their report states, that 

 the attention of the committee was particularly drawn to 

 various alterations and erasures not only in the registers 

 of marriages, baptisms, and burials, but also in tlie 

 ' minister's fee-book.' In several instances the name of 

 Fendall had been altered to Fuedaillei, Prendielleau, &c., 

 &c. In the explanation given by the sexton to the com- 

 mittee, he stated, that since the vestry had refused, in 

 1834, to pay for copying the registers, as required by the 

 52nd George III. c. 4C., the transcripts had not been fur- 

 nished. 



" In an attempt, in the j-ear 1839, to establish a claim 

 to the dignity of a baronet, a necessit3' arose to examine 

 some of the original evidences referred to; when upon 

 examination] of the registers of St. Mary's, Nottingham, 

 it was discovered that the entry of the marriage of Wil- 

 liam Battersby and Jane Fletcher had been altered to 

 William i/attersley ; and the baptisms of two of their 

 children were so altered as to make them appear to have 



* During the trial at Exeter, a transcript of one of the 

 registers, it is said, was found in a garret of a private 

 house in that city ; but as it did not favour the interests 

 of the party who discovered it, it was not noticed. Since 

 then the transcript has been removed, and is not now to 

 be found. 



