By the Rev. F. H. Manley. 



317 



aisle in 1879. The Church is dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. 

 The Pre-Eeformation will given below, Philipps' " Institutions," 

 under date 1506, and Bacon's " Liber Eegis," all agree on this point. 

 The fact that the village people now regard the Sunday which 

 follows the 10th of October as Feast Sunday, seems to show that 

 a change in the old custom was made at the Eeformation, when 

 the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul was removed from our calendar. 



The Eegisters. 



The registers date from 1707. The earliest book was de- 

 destroyed, owing to a fire at the house of the Clerk, John Cutts, 

 where it was kept. There are now seven books, all in a good state 

 of preservation. Eegister A is a parchment volume, and contains 

 baptisms and burials from 1707 to 1812, marriages from 1707 to 

 1765 ; Eegister B contains marriages from 1754 to 1812 ; Eegister 

 C, baptisms from 1813 to 1866; Eegister D, marriages from 1813 

 to 1836; Eegister E, 1 burials from 1813 to the present time; 

 Eegisters F and G, marriages from 1838 to the present time. The 

 Eegistry Office at Salisbury has transcripts of the registers for 

 about twenty of the years previous to 1707, the earliest being for 

 the year 1606. I have taken copies of these and inserted them in 

 our register book A. 



The Communion Plate. 2 



The chalice left for use for this parish in 1553 weighed 7oz., and 

 2oz. were taken for the King. The present chalice is a plain bell- 

 shaped cup with hall-mark of 1743. On the bowl is inscribed 

 "Maria Eeeks Isaaci Eeeks AM. nuperi Eectoris Eelicta 1743 

 DDD na Somerford Magna in Com. Wilts." The paten is plain, 

 6iin. in diam., on a foot, with hall-mark of 1735 and the same in- 

 scription as that on the chalice, except that the date is 1735 instead 

 of 1743. The clerk, who has held his office for some fifty years, tells 

 me that an old chalice was disposed of in my predecessor's time. 



1 Some census returns entered at the beginning give the population in 1800 

 as 358, with 75 inhabited houses, and the population in 1841 as 532, with 104 

 inhabited houses. 



2 Nightingale's " Church Plate of Wilts. ,'' 



