The parish registers reflect with wonderful accuracy the life of the people, and are most valuable to the student of history. Clergymen took great pride in recording “the short and simple annals of the poor.” A Gloucestershire rector (1630 A.D.) wrote in his book the following good advice which might with advantage be taken in many other villages:—
“If you will have this Book last, bee sure to aire it att the fier, or in the Sunne, three or four times a yeare—els it will grow dankish and rott, therefore look to it. It will not be amisse when you find it dankish to wipe over the leaves with a dry wollen cloth. This Place is very much subject to dankishness; therefore I say looke to it.”
A study of the curious entries which we occasionally find conveys much remarkable information. Sometimes, in the days of astrology, in order to assist in casting the nativity, it is recorded that at the time of the child’s birth “the sun was in Libra,” or “in Taurus.” Gipsies were evidently numerous in the sixteenth century, as we constantly find references to “the roguish AEgyptians.” The domestic jester finds his record in the entry: “1580. March 21, William, fool to my Lady Jerningham.” The suicide is “infamously buried.” Heart-burial is often recorded, as at Wooburn, Bucks: “1700. Cadaver Edi Thomas, equitis aurati, hic inhumatum fuit vicessimo tertio die Junii.”
Records of the visitations of the plague are very numerous in all parts of England, as at Egglescliffe, Durham: “1644. In this year there died of the plague in this towne one and twenty people; they are not all buried in the churchyard, and are not in the Register.” Sometimes masses of human bones are found buried in fields outside towns and villages, memorials of this devastating plague.
Parish clerks have not always had very musical voices when they shout out the “Amens.” The Rector of Buxted, Sussex (1666 A.D.), records with a sigh of relief the death of his old clerk, “whose melody warbled forth as if he had been thumped on the back with a stone.”
Sometimes royal visits to the neighbourhood are recorded, even a royal hunt, as when James I. hunted the hare at Fordham, Cambridgeshire. The register of Wolverton gives “a license for eating flesh on prohibited days granted to Sir Tho. Temple, on paying 13s. 4d.” Storms, earthquakes, and floods are described; and records of certificates granted to persons to go before the king to be touched for the disease called the king’s evil.
The Civil War is frequently mentioned, and also caused the omission of many entries. At Tarporley, Cheshire, there is a break from 1643 to 1648, for which the rector thus accounts:—
“This intermission hapned by reason of the great wars obliterating memorials, wasting fortunes, and slaughtering persons of all sorts.”
Parish registers have fared ill and suffered much from the gross carelessness of their custodians. We read of the early books of Christ Church, Hants, being converted into kettle-holders by the curate’s wife. Many have been sold as waste paper, pages ruthlessly cut out, and village schoolbooks covered with the leaves of old registers. The historian of Leicestershire writes of the register of Scraptoft:—
“It has not been a plaything for young pointers—it has not occupied a bacon scratch, or a bread and cheese cupboard—it has not been scribbled on within and without; but it has been treasured ever since 1538, to the honour of a succession of worthy clergymen.”—O si sic omnes!