226 PBESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



been an earlier volume in some of tlie sets wliicli may have been 

 lost, but it is unlikely that many have been lost earlier than the 

 time of Queen Elizabeth. 



Nothing further of any consequence took place with reference 

 to parish registers until 1597. On the 25th Oct. in that year 

 the clergy in convocation made a new ordinance respecting the 

 registers, which was formally approved by the Queen under the 

 great Seal. This was afterwards embodied in the 70th canon of 

 1603, which canon has not been repealed, and is still in force. 

 This ordinance directed that every minister at his institution 

 should subscribe this declaration: — " I shall keep the register 

 books according to the Queen's Majesty's injunctions;" and 

 further it was ordained that every parish should provide itself 

 with a parchment book, in which the entries from the old Paper 

 Books should be fairly and legibly transcribed, each page being 

 authenticated by the signatures of the minister and church- 

 wardens. Moreover, very particular directions were given for the 

 safe custody of the Register Books, and for further security 

 against loss it was ordered that a transcript should be made of all 

 the entries in each year, and be transmitted to the Bishop within 

 a month after Easter, to be preserved in the Episcopal Archives ; 

 and for still further security the Canon provided that if the minister 

 or the churchwardens shall be negligent in the performance of 

 any thing herein, it shall be lawful for the Bishop, or his 

 chancellor, to convent them as contemners of this constitution. 

 Alas ! where are transcripts now. "Whether this Canon may be 

 binding or otherwise on the laity, I say not, but that it is binding 

 on the bishops and clergy is unquestionable. These transcripts, 

 if carefuUy preserved, would be of inestimable value. They 

 have proved so in many instances. They have prevented the 

 most glaring attempts at fraud, and have turned the scale in 

 many peerage cases. May I be permitted to mention two or 

 three examples? In the claim of Charlotte Grertrude M'Carthy, 

 in 1825, to the Stafford Peerage, an attempt at fraud was 

 suspected, the Bishop's transcripts were called for, and a forgery 

 n the original discovered. In the Angell case, where an agri- 

 cultural labourer established a claim to property valued at a 

 million sterling, the Attorney General obtained a rule nisi for a 

 new trial on the ground that the registers produced in court had 



