In this parish the date of the oldest register is 1560, many of the earlier years being evidently copied by the same hand. An entry of the death of Mr. Edward Hurdman, who was the last Bailiff and first Mayor of this city, occurs in 1621: his effigy and that of his wife, in the attitude of prayer, still remain in an arched niche to the south of the chancel. In 1638 is recorded the death of widow Evitt, who buried her husband and her three children of the plague the year before. The dreadful year 1637 was memorable for the fact that in this city no less than 1551 persons died of the plague in ten months, being probably one third of the inhabitants (See "Worcester in Olden Times," p. 198). On March 20, 1645, is recorded the burial of a Mr. Richard Chetell, who is said by a local historian to have been hung before his own door in those troublous times of Civil War, and to have had a flat stone placed to his memory near the south aisle of the church, bearing an inscription to his memory as "the masacred gent." who died March 19, 1645. Comparing the register with the date of death recorded on the tombstone, so sudden an interment would give an air of probability to the tradition. The coat of arms at the bottom of the slab evidently belongs to the family of a Mrs. Rebecca Kyrle, who seems to have been buried in the same vault in 1693. "Collins's fire," an extraordinary event which took place in October, 1703, is entered in a red ink or pencil mark, and the register records that, "James Collins, his wife Ann, with seven children, Ann, James, Thomas, Mary, Charles, Catharine, and Samuel, all which nine persons were burnt together in the fire that burnt their house." This was a singular story. Collins's maid-servant was the only inhabitant of the house who escaped from the fire, but she sustained a broken limb. Afterwards she went into the service of Mrs. Palmer, of Upton Snodsbury, a lady who lived on her property. Mrs. Palmer had a son who was connected with a gang of villains, and in order to obtain her money these wretches murdered Mrs. Palmer and her maid, and burnt the house down. So the poor girl escaped from one fire only to fall into another. The murderers were hung in chains, and Palmer's estates were forfeited to the Bishop of Worcester, who applied one of them to found a school (still existing as Bishop Lloyd's) at Worcester, and the other to charitable uses.
On inquiring for the churchwarden's account books I was informed that since the time when John Dench Wensley (some sixteen or seventeen years ago) so agitated the city and the old city commissioners with his financial squabbles, these books had been missing, and that up to a recent period the accounts had been in a state of great confusion. By the courtesy of the incumbent and churchwardens, I was enabled to explore the parochial chest, and soon found that its triple locks had proved no security against invasion, as not a solitary book relating to the old accounts was left. Only one fragment—consisting of eight or nine leaves, in a piece of brown paper for a cover, and bearing date 1697—remained, and this, on inspection, proved to contain nothing of interest. It is highly probable the abstracted books are not destroyed; and as they are of no use to any one, and the party who has been, whether rightly or wrongly, implicated, being now dead, I trust this will meet the eye of the individual who has them in his possession, and that he will be induced at once to restore them to the church.
A fine black-letter Bible, date 1603, was found in the chest, and being in tolerable preservation, I am glad to hear the churchwardens intend to have it strongly bound with the original wooden covers, which have been torn off.
Rector, the Rev. W. Elliott; churchwardens, Mr. H. Davis and Mr. Kendall. Population in 1851, 2205.
St. John's.
Beginning with 1558, the register of this parish goes on regularly to the present time, with the exception of some omissions in the middle of the seventeenth century. There are no entries in the year 1637: this was the year of the great plague in Worcester, when 1551 persons died here; but as only twenty-six of them were in St. John's it can scarcely be supposed that the vicar would have abandoned his post, or neglected the parochial records, on that account. From 1639 to 1677 all is confusion, entries of various dates being jumbled together as though from recollection, at various times after the Restoration. The greatest part of a century of the early part of the register was evidently copied from an older one. On one of its covers is the following memorandum::