Graunt's "Table for the Country Parish"—identified by Hull with Romsey in Hampshire (Petty, Economic Writings, II, 412)—affords similar evidence. The table for Cranbrook in Kent ends in 1649.
[1327] Burn, Parish Registers, 40; cf. Waters, Parish Registers of England, 10, 11.
In some books many entries are lacking, or there are breaks for several years together. Often the record is so carelessly made as to be of little value, even when not entirely illegible. Thus at St. Ewe, the "parishioners refusing to allow 5s. per annum for keeping a register, there was none kept for the years 1675-6-7," except two entries: Burn, op. cit., 41. The clerk of Plungar, Leicestershire, made use of the registration book for wrapping paper; and Burn gives many other similar illustrations in his unique volume: ibid., 41 ff.
[1328] See chap. viii, pp. 359 ff., above.
[1329] The most interesting published records of the period which I have seen are those contained in the Register Booke of Inglebye iuxta Grenhow (Canterbury, 1889), extending from March 13, 1654, to May 3, 1659. They are written in English. The next entry thereafter, without a word of comment on the change, is in Latin, as if appropriately to mark the return of the ancien régime. Extracts from various records will be found also in Burn, op. cit., 25, 26, 52, 54, 160 ff.; and of these several are reproduced by Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 327, 328. See also Reports of the Hist. Manuscripts Commission, V, 594 (Par. Registrar, Mendlesham, Suffolk, 1653-57); Notes and Queries, 2d series, III, 306, 307; 3d series, V, 526 (from Wilkinson's Hist. of the Parochial Church of Burnly, 1856); 3d series, I, 228; Gentleman's Magazine, LIV (1784), 8, giving a certificate of a marriage at Stratfield Saye, Southampton, October 2, 1654. It is printed in Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, II, 68, 69, note. Compare the registers cited in Bibliographical Note X.
[1330] Henry Scobell was clerk to the Parliament until 1658, and compiler of the "Collections of Acts and Ordinances" of the revolutionary period.
[1331] Waters, op. cit., 16, 17; Burn, op. cit., 160; quoted also by Friedberg, op. cit., 328, note; and Jeaffreson, op. cit., II, 72, 73, note.
[1332] Register Booke of Inglebye iuxta Grenhow, 75.
[1333] Notes and Queries, 2d series, III (1857), 306, 307. For another certificate of the same kind, of a marriage published in the market-place, see Gentleman's Magazine (1784), 8; also quoted by Friedberg, op. cit., 327, 328, note; and other examples may be found in Sanders's Parish Registers of Eastham, 76, note; and Jeaffreson's Middlesex County Records, III, 223.
[1334] The output of controversial literature on this subject may have been great, as Friedberg (op. cit., 328 n. 2) suggests; but the number of pamphlets preserved does not seem to be large. In the valuable collection of the Sutro Library, containing thousands of pamphlets covering nearly every possible question debated at the time, I have been able to discover but two pieces on the civil-marriage law. One of these, a copy of the periodical entitled Several Proceedings of Parliament, publishes the act, which had just passed, without a word of comment. Friedberg had a similar experience in the Berlin Library.