The Key to the Family Deed Chest: How to Decipher and Study Old Documents / Being a Guide to the Reading of Ancient Manuscripts

by Emma Elizabeth Thoyts

Most of the old parish register books now existing are transcripts made according to Queen Elizabeth’s command, as can be seen at a glance, for the handwriting is uniform throughout, which could not have been the case if the notes made by the clerk had been periodically copied into the book. Curiously, the date of these Acts is not known. The bulk of the transcripts date from 1558. Another more stringent Act, to ensure yearly copies being made, was passed upon James I.’s accession to the throne, and the clergyman’s name was to be affixed to each page as witness that the copy was faithfully exact. Had these wise regulations been carried out to the letter, and in the spirit that was intended, we should now possess an invaluable corroboration of the accuracy of the parish registers; but alas! the transcripts to be found in the diocesan registries are meagre and imperfect. Years and series of years are missing, and the entries are so lacking in detail as to be practically useless. In some dioceses no transcripts remain—Rochester, for instance.

Personal search can, of course, be made among the diocesan registers, and this is strongly to be recommended, for any mistakes in a transcript render it not only valueless, but mischievous. Extracts from registers are the most dangerous material a genealogist has to deal with. Unless further authenticated by wills and old deeds to confirm the relationship, it will be found no easy job to piece together these broken links in the chain of evidence, and without wilful misrepresentation being intended, mistakes may and will occur.

Take, for instance, any name, and try to trace out the pedigree with the help of the parish register only. At first it is easy enough, whether worked backwards or forwards, but after the first three or four generations have been worked out all certainty of relationship is lost, and becomes confused.

The handwriting of the parish registers is a combination of the old set law-hand and the personal handwritings mentioned in the second chapter. Original entries (i.e., entries made at the time of performing the religious ceremony) are seldom met with before the middle of James I.’s reign, by which time the Latin language had fallen into disuse.

The Commonwealth Government passed an Act of Parliament appointing paid registrars to every village (1653). These were often illiterate men, whose only accomplishments consisted of being able to read and write, and whose zeal and discretion alone regulated the keeping of the register books. This duty was often but ill-performed, especially when age and infirmity overtook the registrar, who continued in office until death relieved him of his duties. No second registrar seemed in any case to have been appointed, nor did the Act of Parliament provide for such a contingency, and the work of keeping the registers devolved again upon the clergyman and his assistant clerk.

For several years after the Restoration of 1660 the registers were irregularly kept, and very erratic. The old race of educated clerks was gone. Formerly, when the registers first began, clerkships may have been filled by men educated in the monasteries, who, when turned adrift, were glad to employ themselves as priests’ chaplains or private tutors as a means of livelihood.

Until the last century very few small schools of any kind existed for the poorer classes, except those provided by charitable bequests. These were few and far between, and could be of little benefit to the masses of the people. No wonder, then, that the ill-paid clergy were obliged to be content with very uneducated men to serve in the capacity of clerk. The registers of the latter part of the seventeenth century are indited in every variety of illegibly bad writing.

The chief difficulty of reading the old registers lies in the immense variety of forms a name was capable of passing through, owing to the laxity of English spelling and pronunciation. The people only knew their own surnames by oral tradition, and were entirely dependent upon the parish clerk, who wrote down the name as it sounded to him, and as sounds have a different effect on different persons, the commonest names often appeared in very strange and unrecognisable disguises before they finally crystallized into their modern forms. Eeles, Yeeles, became Wells.

It is not unusual to find items of miscellaneous information jotted down at random by the clergyman among the entries of births, marriages, and deaths. Heavy falls of snow, disastrous floods, periods of drought, storms of any kind, were all events of great local importance in country places, and would remain for a long time as traditional landmarks in their annals. Alas! such items are rare, and are now rendered impossible in the printed columns of the modern register books.

The most useful and least troublesome way to catalogue the contents of a parish register for reference is to write out the year, and below it enter the births, marriages, and deaths, with the names occurring under each heading, but without taking the time or trouble to copy the dates of day or month, these last being only required for law investigations, and for which purpose a signed certificate from the clergyman direct from the originals only would be received as evidence.