232 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



Itm for surplus for the clerke (clergyman) . iij s 

 Bin for smoke silvar ..... xvij d " 



All these entries, to the church historian, and no less to the 

 general student, cannot be without peculiar interest. The 

 smoke silver, which so frequently occurs, is either the money 

 paid for certain privileges of cutting fuel, which, as we have 

 seen, was formerly the case in the Forest, or an assessment 

 on the houses according to the number of hearths, but more 

 probably the former.* The general reader will scarcely care 

 for more, but I trust elsewhere to give further extracts from 

 these most interesting books. 



Turning back to the Registers, let me add from the Ibbesley 

 Parish Register Book, as so few people have seen a specimen, 

 an entry of an affidavit of burial in a woollen shroud, in com- 

 pliance with the Act passed in 1679, for the encouragement of 

 the woollen manufacture in England.f It thus runs, placed 

 opposite to the entry of the person's burial, and written in 

 the same handwriting: "Jan. 9 th , 16t?, I rec d a certificate 

 from Mr. Roger Clavell, Justice of y e peace at Brokenhurst, 

 that Thomas King and Anthony King, sons of Anthony King, 

 deceased, did make oath before him, the sayd Roger Clavell, 

 that the aforesayd Antony King was buried according to the 

 late Act of Parliament," 



* See Notes and Queries. First Series, vol. ii., pp. 344, 345. In the 

 Churchwardens' Books of Fordingbridge we find "1609. For smoke- 

 mony, for makynge and deliveringe of the bills xvj d ," which would confirm 

 the first explanation given in the text. 



t 30 Car. II., cap. iii. See Journals of the House of Commons, vol. viii., 

 p. 650 ; ix., p. 440. In Burn's History of Parish Registers, second edition, 

 p. 117, may be found a much more complicated affidavit than those given in 

 the text. 



