328 On some Curiosities and Statistics of Parish Registers. 



number of similar records belonging to various dissenting bodies, 

 lists and descriptions of which are comprised in the report of a Com- 

 mission on the subject which was appointed in 1836, and which 

 reported the following year. The earliest 'of these registers are 

 those of the French Protestants in London and Canterbury, which 

 go back as far as 1567. The Baptist community come next in point 

 of antiquity : their registers begin in the reign of Charles I. See 

 Parliamentary Papers, vol. xxviii. There are some singular entries 

 in the marriage registers of Shapwick Church, Dorsetshire, occurring 

 at intervals from 1695 to 1722, and running thus, " Manyed else- 

 where,'' or else " Marry ed, or pretended, at a lawless church.'' I 

 imagine that these must refer to a chapel of the Nonjurors, though 

 the Vicar of the parish tells me that he has not been able to obtain 

 any evidence of the existence of such in the neighbourhood. He 

 says however that there were a large number of Royalists in Shap- 

 wick at the time of the Great Rebellion, and he thinks it not at all 

 unlikely that their children would be led by the principles in which 

 they had been brought up to espouse the cause of the Nonjurors 

 in the next generation. 



Modern foreign registration does not of course come within the 

 scope of our investigation as an archaeological society ; but for the 

 benefit of anyone who may be curious in such matters I may say 

 that there is a considerable amount of information on the subject 

 derivable from the report of the Commission of 1832. See Parlia- 

 mentary Papers, vol. xiv. 



In the same volume I see a very remarkable statement by one 

 witness to the effect that " At the last York Assizes . . . upon 

 Mr. Serjeant Jones stating that an obliteration appeared in a register 

 which was produced, Mr. Justice Alderson, who tried the cause, 

 observed ' Are you surprised at that, Brother Jones ? . I am not at 

 all surprised. I have had much experience, and I never saw a parish 

 register book in my life that was not falsified in one way or other, 

 and I do not believe that there is one that is not.' " (Page 64.) I 

 cannot help thinking that this was by far too sweeping a statement 

 of the learned and distinguished Judge's ; although unquestionably 

 in the very careless and un-business-like way in which registers 



