JULY 259 



kneeling figure is turned towards the east, and, because of its 

 position in the deep niche, I doubt if anyone has seen it quite 

 clearly since it was placed there generations ago, unless it be 

 those who from time to time have had the curiosity to examine it 

 by aid of a ladder. 



A few pages back I stated my belief that the registers in this 

 neighbourhood were written up at the beginning by a clerk who 

 travelled from church to church. Here, at Woodton, oddly 

 enough, I have discovered his name, for he has scribbled it in 

 unmistakable writing upon the fly-leaf of the first register. It 

 was Spendlove ; probably the brother or son of a rector of Wood- 

 ton of that name. 



After the year 1730 printed forms of register-books began to 

 be issued, in which, as they do to-day, the brides and bridegrooms 

 signed their names, or, rather, made their marks, for not one in a 

 score of them could write. In that day they very seldom used 

 the x which is now the common token of illiterates. Such 

 marks as these, ^ , or (^ , were the favourite signs, especially 

 among the women. It is pathetic to look at the long succession 

 of these little marks, made every one of them with a trembling 

 hand, and to reflect that they are all that remain, absolutely the 

 only record, of those forgotten brides who generations since bent 

 one by one over this shabby, faded book. They have departed so 

 completely that even those in whose bodies their blood runs do 

 not so much as know that they existed, and these wavering signs, 

 which no one ever sees, made by them in the supreme moment of 

 their lives, are all that is left to show that once they breathed 

 this very air, walked these fields, and passed beneath this ancient 

 porch to baptism, to bridal, and to burial. 



I never heard of labouring people, or even of the farmer class, 

 taking the trouble to consult a register ; but were they to do so, 

 most of them could establish their pedigrees, at any rate for the 



in 1559 Baron Hunsdon of Hunsdon, co. Hertfordshire, and that this Dame 

 Blanche was daughter to Sir John Carey, third Baron Hunsdon, whose second 

 husband was Sir Thomas Wodehouse, who died 1658. 



S 2 



