316 On some Curiosities and Statistics of Parish Registers. 



1655. Amongst the duties of this official was the publishing the 

 banns of marriage, a thing which had to be done for three consecutive 

 Sundays, as heretofore, after which the parties could be married by 

 any justice of the peace, the Register attending as one of the wit- 

 nesses. The following is a record of one of these marriages, extracted 

 from the books at Tdmiston, near Salisbury : " The 8th of May, 

 1654). William Butler of Borecombe in this county shepherd about 

 the age of ^4 years was married the day and year above written 

 unto Dennis Bevis of Bulford, being about 27 years of age. And 

 so declared (according to the Act of Parliament in that behalf made 

 and provided) by John Rede of Porton, Esq. one of the justices of 

 the peace for the county of Wilts and in the presence of John Butler 

 father of the said William and Robert Rivers and Thomas Bevis 

 brother of the said Dennis and others. The certificate from John 

 Smith, Register of Bulford was there produced and the Parish 

 Register of Borecombe was then and there present, affirming that 

 the said parties were published three times by himself at Borecombe, 

 as it is required by the said act. Andrew London, Parish Register. ^^ 



It is noticable that ages are often given in the inexact way in 

 which they appear in this document during the period of the Great 

 Rebellion — though on the other hand, in the baptismal book it is 

 often the date of birth and not that of baptism which is recorded. 

 This is the case at Southbroom from 1653 to 1657. And at Fifield 

 Bavant it would seem as if births were registered even in cases where 

 no baptism was administered. 



I find at Broad Hinton a curiously strong expression of opinion 

 with regard to the ecclesiastical polity of these times. Appended 

 to the registry of the burial of one Mr. William Glanvill in 1680 

 is the following : " N.B. He was the son of Sr. John Glanvill, Kt. 

 Sergeant at law and Speaker to the House of Commons in the year 

 1640 in the days of that blessed martyr King Charles the First that 

 glorious Defender of the Church of England against cursed pres- 

 bytery.'' 



To a period not long removed from this belong also three curious 

 entries of deaths for which I am indebted to an article in the (now 

 deceased) Home and Foreign Review : — 



