228 president's address. 



parish, to which they belong is by ascertaining of what parish 

 the subscribing clergyman was incumbent ; and moreover they 

 are all mixed together for all parishes in the diocese. They 

 appeared to me to have fallen down promiscuously on the stone 

 floor, and had lain there for a considerable time, and been 

 walked over by persons whose business took them into the room, 

 until some one, of a somewhat greater spirit of tidyness than his 

 predecessors, gathered up and tied them in crumpled bundles, 

 like bundles of hay. I spent several days in smoothing them 

 out and tying them up in bundles in some measure flattened, but 

 not having a press I was not very successful. I did not make 

 any attempt at a classification, except that during the last few 

 days I endeavoured to separate them under the two counties of 

 of Devon and Cornwall." 



I am very sorry to add that this is not an isolated case. 

 The transcripts in the other Episcopal Registries in the West of 

 England, e.g., Hereford, Worcestor, and Gloucester, are com- 

 paratively few. Bristol has escaped the shame, because all her 

 Episcopal Archives were burnt, together with the Bishop's 

 Palace, in the riots in 1832. What has been the cause of this 

 neglect of the Registers ? Did the ministers and churchwardens 

 contemn the Canon. I do not think so, for I have noticed in the 

 churchwarden's accounts from time to time, trifling charges for 

 writing the transcripts. I am afraid we must come to the 

 conclusion that the blame must rest upon the carelessness and 

 neglect of the Bishops and their chief officers. 



I afterwards discovered that a great many of the transcripts 

 relating to the Cornish parishes exist in the Archdeaconry Court 

 at Bodmin, which, in some measure accounts, for the paucity of 

 the returns in the Bishop's registry, where, under the Act of 

 Parliament, they ought all to have been deposited. They had 

 probably been delivered in at the Archdeacon's Visitation, and 

 had not reached any further. These also, I am sorry to say, are 

 in a very bad condition, though they have not been treated with 

 such gross neglect as have those in the Episcopal registry. As 

 regards the records in the Archdeaconry Court, I would refer to 

 the excellent description of them by the Eev. W. lago, printed 

 in the Truro Diocesan Kalendar for 1882, p. 69. From this 

 description all necessary information may be readily obtained. 



