By the Rev. W. C. Plenderleath. 829 



were too often kept, there were great opportunities o£ falsification, 

 of which advantage is known to have been sometimes taken. The 

 only instance of this which has come to my own knowledge occurred 

 at the Church of St. Peter, Cornhill, and for the following account 

 of it I am indebted to the Rev. Richard Whittington, Rector of the 

 parish, and I believe a collateral descendant of the well-known Lord 

 Mayor of that name. " In 1829," he says, " a Chancery suit was 

 pending, the issue of which turned upon an entry in the register, 

 and two persons came to see the books in company with the parish 

 clerk. They afterwards induced him to retire to spend the evening 

 at one of the taverns in the parish, and then, after making him 

 drunk, as the evidence sworn before the Lord Mayor would seem to 

 show, he delivered up the keys of the church and registers, that they 

 might search them (as they said) early the next morning. They 

 paid an early visit, it would seem, to the church, erased the original 

 entry, and in a veiy clumsy manner inserted another and then de- 

 camped." 



1 have already incidentally given several examples from burial 

 records of epithets or descriptions attaching to the persons whose 

 decease is recorded. I proceed to add a few more. At St. Oswald's, 

 Durham, " Lyonel Martine, a very honest man, aged Ixxxxvii. years, 

 bur. 23 July, 1616." And in the same book, " Mrs. Margaret 

 Pudsay, and old maid, papist." At Great Staughton, Hunts, in 

 1618, "Sepulta est Jana Poole, anicula." At Teddington, Mid- 

 dlesex, " James Parsons, who had often eat a shoulder of mutton, or 

 a peck of hasty pudding at a time, which caused his death, buried 

 March 7, 174|, aged 36." At Norton in Cheshire, was buried in 

 1743 a gentleman who is lauded in the register book almost as much 

 as he might have been on his tombstone : " Comeliness and cheerful- 

 ness shone brightly in him : his expressions were handsome, facetious, 

 and mild : to all easy and just : to his friends particularly respectful;'* 

 and so on. 



Li the marriage registers I have only come across one descriptive 

 entry, and that is at Sea Salter, in Kent, where is the following : 

 " John Housden, widower, a gape mouthed lazy fellow, and Hannah 

 Matthews, an old toothless hag, both of Favereham, were trammelled 



