Hic puer ætatem, his Vir sponsalia noscat.
Hic decessorum funera quisque sciat.
No Flatt'ry here, where to be born and die
Of rich and poor is all the history.
Enough, if virtue fill'd the space between,
Prov'd, by the ends of being, to have been.
Bishop Kennet urged his clergy to enter in their registers not only every christening, wedding, or burial, which entries have proved some of the best helps for the preserving of history, but also any notable events that may have occurred in the parish or neighbourhood, such as "storms and lightning, contagion and mortality, droughts, scarcity, plenty, longevity, robbery, murders, or the like casualties. If such memorable things were fairly entered, your parish registers would become chronicles of many strange occurrences that would not otherwise be known and would be of great use and service for posterity to know."
The clergy have often acted upon this suggestion. In the registers of Cranbrook, Kent, we find a long account of the great plague that raged there in 1558, with certain moral reflections on the vice of "drunkeness which abounded here," on the base characters of the persons in whose houses the Plague began and ended, on the vehemence of the infection in "the Inns and Suckling houses of the town, places of much disorder," and tells how great dearth followed the Plague "with much wailing and sorrow," and how the judgment of God seemed but to harden the people in their sin.
The Eastwell register contains copies of the Protestation of 1642, the Vow and Covenant of 1643, and the Solemn League and Covenant of the same year, all signed by sundry parishioners, and of the death of the last of the Plantagenets, Richard by name, a bricklayer by trade, in 1550, whom Richard III acknowledged to be his son on the eve of the battle of Bosworth. At St. Oswalds, Durham, there is the record of the hanging and quartering in 1590 of "Duke, Hyll, Hogge and Holyday, iiij Semynaryes, Papysts, Tretors and Rebels for their horrible offences." "Burials, 1687 April 17th Georges Vilaus Lord dooke of bookingham," is the illiterate description of the Duke who was assassinated by Felton and buried at Helmsley. It is impossible to mention all the gleanings from parish registers; each parish tells its tale, its trades, its belief in witchcraft, its burials of soldiers killed in war, its stories of persecution, riot, sudden deaths, amazing virtues, and terrible sins. The edicts of the laws of England, wise and foolish, are reflected in these pages, e.g. the enforced burial in woollen; the relatives of those who desired to be buried in linen were obliged to pay fifty shillings to the informer and the same sum to the poor of the parish. The tax on marriages, births, and burials, levied by the Government on the estates of gentlemen in 1693, is also recorded in such entries as the following:—
"1700. Mr. Thomas Cullum buried 27 Dec. As the said Mr. Cullum was a gentleman, there is 24s. to be paid for his buriall." The practice of heart-burial is also frequently demonstrated in our books. Extraordinary superstitions and strong beliefs, the use of talismans, amulets, and charms, astrological observations, the black art, scandals, barbarous punishments, weird customs that prevailed at man's most important ceremonies, his baptism, marriage and burial, the binding of apprenticeships, obsolete trades, such as that of the person who is styled "aquavity man" or the "saltpetre man," the mode of settling quarrels and disputes, duels, sports, games, brawls, the expenses of supplying a queen's household, local customs and observances—all these find a place in these amazing records. In short, there is scarcely any feature of the social life of our forefathers which is not abundantly set forth in our parish registers. The loss of them would indeed be great and overwhelming.
As we have said, many of them have been lost by fire and other casualties, by neglect and carelessness. The guarding of the safety of those that remain is an anxious problem. Many of us would regret to part with our registers and to allow them to leave the church or town or village wherein they have reposed so long. They are part of the story of the place, and when American ladies and gentlemen come to find traces of their ancestors they love to see these records in the village where their forefathers lived, and to carry away with them a photograph of the church, some ivy from the tower, some flowers from the rectory garden, to preserve in their western homes as memorials of the place whence their family came. It would not be the same thing if they were to be referred to a dusty office in a distant town. Some wise people say that all registers should be sent to London, to the Record Office or the British Museum. That would be an impossibility. The officials of those institutions would tremble at the thought, and the glut of valuable books would make reference a toil that few could undertake. The real solution of the difficulty is that county councils should provide accommodation for all deeds and documents, that all registers should be transcribed, that copies should be deposited in the county council depository, and that the originals should still remain in the parish chest where they have lain for three centuries and a half.