May 4. 1850.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
443 
of Chart, the 120 baptisms in the years 1640—1659, 
if representing the actual births, would indicate a 
population of about 200 during that period ; while 
the 246 entries in the previous twenty years would 
give upwards of 400 inhabitants. According to 
the several censuses, Chart contained 381 persons 
in 1801, and 424, 500, 610, 604, respectively, at 
the subsequent decades. 
While on the subject of parish registers, I may 
add, that a scheme has been propounded by the 
Rey. E. Wyatt Edgell, in a paper read before the 
Statistical Society, for transcribing and printing 
in a convenient form the whole of the extant 
parish register books of England and Wales, thus 
concentrating those valuable records, and preserv- 
ing, before it is too late, their contents from the 
effects of time and accidental injuries. The want 
of funds to defray the cost of copying and printing 
is the one great difliculty of the plan. 
James T. Hammack. 
April 2. 
EARLY STATISTICS.—PARISH REGISTERS. 
In reference to the observations of your cor- 
respondent “ E. R. J. H.,” he will find, upon closer 
examination, that no comparison approaching to 
accuracy can be made between the population of 
any place at different periods of the seventeenth 
century, founded upon the entries in parish regis- 
ters of baptisms, births, or marriages. In 1653 
the ecclesiastical registers ceased to contain much 
of the information they had before given. In that 
year was passed, “An Act how Marriages shall be 
solemnised and registered, and also for a Register 
of Births and Burials;” which first introduced 
registers of births and not of baptisms. ‘The Act 
treated marriage as a civil contract, to be solem- 
nised before a justice of the peace; and it directed 
that, for the entry of all marriages, and “of all 
births of children, and burial of all sorts of people, 
within every parish,” the rated inhabitants should 
choose “an honest and able person to be called 
‘The Parish Register,” sworn before and ap- 
proved by a neighbouring magistrate. Until after 
the Restoration, this Act was found practicable ; 
and in many parishes these books (distinct from 
the clergyman’s register of baptisms, &c., cele- 
brated in the church) continue to be fairly pre- 
served. In such parishes, and in no others, a 
correct comparative estimate of the population 
may be formed. 
The value of the parochial registers for statis- 
tical and historical purposes cannot be overrated ; 
and yet their great loss in very recent times is 
beyond all doubt. It was given in evidence be- 
fore the committee on registration, 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; whilst, during the 
same half-century, nineteen old registers had 
found their way back to the proper repository. 
On searching the MSS. in Skelton Castle, in 
Cleveland, a few years since, the first register of 
that parish was discovered, and has been restored. 
These changes show how great the danger is to 
which the old registers are exposed; and in many 
instances it saves time and trouble to search the 
Bishop's transcripts before searching the original 
registers. Wa. Durrant Cooper. 
81. Guildford Street, March 25. 1850. 
BYRON’S LARA. 
I cannot agree with your able correspondent 
“C. B.” (No. 20. p. 224., and No. 17. p. 262.), 
that Ezzelin in “Lara” is Seyd of the “ Cor- 
sair.” My interpretation of both tales is as 
follows :— Lara and Ezzelin both lived in youth 
where they afterwards met, viz. in a midland 
county of England—time about the fourteenth 
century. Ezzelin was a kinsman, or, more pro- 
bably, a lover of Medora, whom Lara induced to 
fly with him, and who shared his corsair life. When 
Lara had returned home, the midnight scene in 
the gallery arose from some Frankenstein creation 
of his own bad conscience; a “ horrible shadow,” 
an “unreal mockery.’ Kaled was Gulnare dis- 
guised as a page; and when Lara met Ezzelin at 
Otho’s house, Ezzelin’s indignation arose from his 
recollection of Medora’s abduction. Otho favours 
Ezzelin in this quarrel; and, when Kaled looks 
down upon the “sudden strife,” and becomes 
deeply moved, her agitation was from seeing in 
Ezzelin the champion of Medora, her own rival 
in the affections of Lara. Ezzelin is murdered, 
probably by the contrivance of Kaled, who had 
before shown that she could lend a hand in such 
an affair. After this, Lara collects a band, like 
what David gathered to himself in the cave of 
Adullam, and what follows suits the medizval 
period of English history. 
I will briefly quote in support of this view. 
Otho shows that Lara and Ezzelin had both sprung 
from one spot, when he says, 
“TI pledge myself for thee, as not unknown, 
Though like Count Lara now return’d alone 
From other lands, almost a stranger grown.” 
The 9th section of canto 1. is a description of 
Byron himself at Newstead (the two poems are 
merely vehicles of their authors’ own feelings), with 
the celebrated skull, since made into a drinking 
cup, beside him. ‘The succeeding section is a pic- 
