By the Rev. W. C. Plenderleatk. 809 



ag-ainst a person unmentioned : " Here endeth the Ist boke of the 

 Register of Birohingtown. The 2nd boke called the black boke was 

 spoiled by an ignorant woman." 



On the other hand, at Barkstone, in Leicestershire, is a gratifying 

 instance of conscientiousness on the part of the clergyman, who, 

 after recording the baptism of one Ellen Dun, adds, " Lord pardon 

 me if I am guilty of any errour in registering Ellen Dun's name/' 

 This gentleman would have been sorely scandalized had he chanced 

 to fall in with the Rector of Tunstall in Kent (A.D. 1567) who 

 after recording the birth and baptism of one Mary Pottman in April, 

 of another in June, and the burial of a third in September, added in 

 disgust at so large an expenditure of ink, " From henceforw'. I 

 omitt the Pottmans." 



I may conclude this portion of my subject by stating that it was 

 given in evidence before a committee of the House of Commons in 

 1833, that " out of seventy or eighty parishes for which Bridges 

 made collections a century since, thirteen of the old registers have 

 been lost, and three accidentally burnt. On a comparison of the 

 dates of the Sussex registers seen by Sir W. Burrell between 1770 

 and 1780 and of those returned as the earliest in the population 

 returns of 1831, the old registers in no less than twenty-nine parishes 

 had in the interval disappeared ; while during the same half-century, 

 nineteen old registers had found their way back to the proper re- 

 pository. On searching the MS. in Skelton Castle, in Cleveland, a 

 few years ago, the first register of the parish was discovered, and 

 has since been restored." And in another part of the same evidence 

 it is stated by a witness that only the previous year a gentleman of 

 the Heralds' College had written to a clergyman for copies of certain 

 registers, and the latter, instead of making copies, cut out the 

 original pages and forwarded them to his correspondent, saying that 

 he himself " coidd make nothing of them ! " 



But even where the books have always been duly kept, the leaves 

 not torn out, and "the Pottmans" not intentionally omitted, it by 

 no means follows that the registers are all that can be desired. I 

 have already stated that the direction given in Cromwell's injunctions 

 is that the duties ol each week are all to be entered upon the following 



VOL. XYI. NO. XLYIII. X 



