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In the civil war parish registers fell into some confusion, and whenthe clergy did make entries they commonly expressed their politicalfeelings in a mixture of Latin and English. Latin, by the way, wentout as Protestantism came in, but the curate of Rotherby, inLeicestershire, writes, "Bellum, Bellum, Bellum, interruption!persecution!" At St. Bridget's, in Chester, is the quaint entry,"1643. Here the register is defective till 1653. The tymes wereSUCH!" At Hilton, in Dorset, William Snoke, minister, entered hisopinion that persons whose baptism and marriage were not registered"will be made uncapable of any earthly inheritance if they live.This I note for the satisfaction of any that do:" though we maydoubt whether these parishioners found the information thus conveyedhighly satisfactory.

The register of Maid's Moreton, Bucks, tells how the reading-desk (aspread eagle, gilt) was "doomed to perish as an abominable idoll;"and how the cross on the steeple nearly (but not quite) knocked outthe brains of the Puritan who removed it. The Puritans had theirway with the registers as well as with the eagle ("the vowl," as theold country people call it), and laymen took the place of parsons asregistrars in 1653. The books from 1653 to 1660, while this regimelasted, "were kept exceptionally well," new brooms sweeping clean.The books of the period contain fewer of the old Puritan Christiannames than we might have expected. We find, "REPENTE Kytchens," sostyled before the poor little thing had anything but original sin torepent of. "FAINT NOT Kennard" is also registered, and "FREEGIFTMabbe."

A novelty was introduced into registers in 1678. The law required(for purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead should beburied in woollen winding-sheets. The price of the wool was theobolus paid to the Charon of the Revenue. After March 25, 1667, noperson was to be "buried in any shirt, shift, or sheet other thatshould be made of woole only." Thus when the children in a littleOxfordshire village lately beheld a ghost, "dressed in a long narrowgown of woollen, with bandages round the head and chin," it is clearthat the ghost was much more than a hundred years old, for the act"had fallen into disuse long before it was repealed in 1814." Butthis has little to do with parish registers. The addition made tothe duties of the keeper of the register in 1678 was this--he had totake and record the affidavit of a kinsman of the dead, to theeffect that the corpse was actually buried in woollen fabric. Theupper classes, however, preferred to bury in linen, and to pay thefine of 5L. When Mistress Oldfield, the famous actress, wasinterred in 1730, her body was arrayed "in a very fine Brussels laceheaddress, a holland shift with a tucker and double ruffles of thesame lace, and a pair of new kid gloves."

In 1694 an empty exchequer was replenished by a tax on marriages,births, and burials, the very extortion which had been feared by theinsurgents in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The tax collectors hadaccess without payment of fee to the registers. The registration ofbirths was discontinued when the Taxation Acts expired. An attemptto introduce the registration of births was made in 1753, butunsuccessfully. The public had the old superstitious dread ofanything like a census. Moreover, the custom was denounced as"French," and therefore abominable. In the same way it was thoughttelling to call the cloture "the French gag" during some recentdiscussions of parliamentary rules. In 1783 the parish register wasagain made the instrument of taxation, and threepence was charged onevery entry. Thus "the clergyman was placed in the invidious lightof a tax collector, and as the poor were often unable or unwillingto pay the tax, the clergy had a direct inducement to retain theirgood-will by keeping the registers defective."

It is easy to imagine the indignation in Scotland when "bang wentsaxpence" every time a poor man had twins! Of course the Scotchrose up against this unparalleled extortion. At last, in 1812,"Rose's Act" was passed. It is styled "an Act for the betterregulating and preserving registers of births," but the registrationof births is altogether omitted from its provisions. By a stroke ofthe wildest wit the penalty of transportation for fourteen years,for making a false entry, "is to be divided equally between theinformer and the poor of the parish." A more casual Act has rarelybeen drafted.

Without entering into the modern history of parish registers, we mayborrow a few of the ancient curiosities to be found therein, theblunders and the waggeries of forgotten priests, and curates, andparish clerks. In quite recent times (1832) it was thought worthwhile to record that Charity Morrell at her wedding had signed hername in the register with her right foot, and that the ring had beenplaced on the fourth toe of her left foot; for poor Charity was bornwithout arms. Sometimes the time of a birth was recorded with muchminuteness, that the astrologers might draw a more accuratehoroscope. Unlucky children, with no acknowledged fathers, wereentered in a variety of odd ways. In Lambeth (1685), GeorgeSpeedwell is put down as "a merry begot;" Anne Twine is "filiauniuscujusque." At Croydon, a certain William is "terraefilius"(1582), an autochthonous infant. Among the queer names offoundlings are "Nameless," "Godsend," "Subpoena," and "Moyses andAaron, two children found," not in the bulrushes, but "in thestreet."

The rule was to give the foundling for surname the name of theparish, and from the Temple Church came no fewer than one hundredand four foundlings named "Temple," between 1728 and 1755. TheseTemples are the plebeian gens of the patrician house which claimsdescent from Godiva. The use of surnames as Christian names islater than the Reformation, and is the result of a reaction againstthe exclusive use of saints' names from the calendar. Anotherexample of the same reaction is the use of Old Testament names, and"Ananias and Sapphira were favourite names with the Presbyterians."It is only fair to add that these names are no longer popular withPresbyterians, at any rate in the Kirk of Scotland. The old Puritanargument was that you would hardly select the name of too notoriousa scriptural sinner, "as bearing testimony to the triumph of graceover original sin." But in America a clergyman has been known todecline to christen a child "Pontius Pilate," and no wonder.

Entries of burials in ancient times often contained somebiographical information about the deceased. But nothing couldpossibly be vaguer than this: "1615, February 28, St. Martin's,Ludgate, was buried an anatomy from the College of Physicians."Man, woman, or child, sinner or saint, we know not, only that "ananatomy" found Christian burial in St. Martin's, Ludgate. How muchmore full and characteristic is this, from St. Peter's-in-the-East,Oxford (1568): 'There was buried Alyce, the wiff of a naughtyfellow whose name is Matthew Manne.' There is immortality forMatthew Manne, and there is, in short-hand, the tragedy of "Alycehis wiff." The reader of this record knows more of Matthew than intwo hundred years any one is likely to know of us who moralise overMatthew! At Kyloe, in Northumberland, the intellectual defects ofHenry Watson have, like the naughtiness of Manne, secured him ameasure of fame. (1696.) "Henry was so great a fooll, that he nevercould put on his own close, nor never went a quarter of a mile offthe house," as Voltaire's Memnon resolved never to do, and as Pascalpartly recommends.

What had Mary Woodfield done to deserve the alias which the Croydonregister gives her of "Queen of Hell"? (1788.) Distinguished peoplewere buried in effigy, in all the different churches with which theywere connected, and each sham burial service was entered in theparish registers, a snare and stumbling-block to the historian.This curious custom is very ancient. Thus we read in the Odysseythat when Menelaus heard in Egypt of the death of Agamemnon hereared for him a cenotaph, and piled an empty barrow "that the fameof the dead man might never be quenched." Probably this old usagegave rise to the claims of several Greek cities to possess the tombof this or that ancient hero. A heroic tomb, as of Cassandra forexample, several towns had to show, but which was the true grave,which were the cenotaphs? Queen Elizabeth was buried in all theLondon churches, and poor Cassandra had her barrow in Argos,Mycenae, and Amyclae.

"A drynkyng for the soul" of the dead, a [Greek text] or funeralfeast, was as common in England before the Reformation as in ancientGreece. James Cooke, of Sporle, in Norfolk (1528), left sixshillings and eightpence to pay for this "drynkyng for his soul;"and the funeral feast, which long survived in the distribution ofwine, wafers, and rosemary, still endures as a slight collation ofwine and cake in Scotland. What a funeral could be, as late as1731, Mr. Chester Waters proves by the bill for the burial of AndrewCard, senior bencher of Gray's Inn. The deceased was brave in a"superfine pinked shroud" (cheap at 1L. 5S. 6D.), and there wereeight large plate candle-sticks on stands round the dais, andninety-six buckram escutcheons. The pall-bearers wore Alamodehatbands covered with frizances, and so did the divines who werepresent at the melancholy but gorgeous function. A hundred men inmourning carried a hundred white wax branch lights, and the glovesof the porters in Gray's Inn were ash-coloured with black points.Yet the wine cost no more than 1L. 19S. 6D.; a "deal of sack," by nomeans "intolerable."

Leaving the funerals, we find that the parish register sometimesrecords ancient and obsolete modes of death. Thus, martyrs arescarce now, but the register of All Saints', Derby, 1556, mentions"a poor blinde woman called Joan Waste, of this parish, a martyr,burned in Windmill pit." She was condemned by Ralph Baynes, Bishopof Coventry and Lichfield. In 1558, at Richmond, in Yorkshire, wefind "Richard Snell, b'rnt, bur. 9 Sept." At Croydon, in 1585,Roger Shepherd probably never expected to be eaten by a lioness.Roger was not, like Wyllyam Barker, "a common drunkard andblasphemer," and we cannot regard the Croydon lioness, like theNemean lion, as a miraculous monster sent against the county ofSurrey for the sins of the people. The lioness "was brought intothe town to be seen of such as would give money to see her. He"(Roger) "was sore wounded in sundry places, and was buried the 26thAug."

In 1590, the register of St. Oswald's, Durham, informs us that"Duke, Hyll, Hogge, and Holiday" were hanged and burned for "therehorrible offences." The arm of one of these horrible offenders waspreserved at St. Omer as the relic of a martyr, "a most precioustreasure," in 1686. But no one knew whether the arm belongedoriginally to Holiday, Hyll, Duke, or Hogge. The coals, when theseunfortunate men were burned, cost sixpence; the other items in theaccount of the abominable execution are, perhaps, too repulsive tobe quoted.

According to some critics of the British government, we do not treatthe Egyptians well. But our conduct towards the Fellahs hascertainly improved since this entry was made in the register of St.Nicholas, Durham (1592, August 8th): 'Simson, Arington,Featherston, Fenwick, and Lancaster, WERE HANGED FOR BEINGEGYPTIANS.' They were, in fact, gypsies, or had been consortingwith gypsies, and they suffered under 5 Eliz. c. 20. In 1783 thisstatute was abolished, and was even considered "a law of excessiveseverity." For even a hundred years ago "the puling cant of sicklyhumanitarianism" was making itself heard to the injury of our sturdyold English legislation. To be killed by a poet is now an unusualfate, but the St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, register (1598) mentionshow "Gabriel Spencer, being slayne, was buried." Gabriel was"slayne" by Rare Ben Jonson, in Hoxton Fields.

The burning of witches is, naturally, not an uncommon item in parishregisters, and is set forth in a bold, business-like manner. OnAugust 21 (1650) fifteen women and one man were executed for theimaginary crime of witchcraft. "A grave, for a witch, sixpence," isan item in the municipal accounts. And the grave was a cheap havenfor the poor woman who had been committed to the tender mercies of aScotch witch-trier. Cetewayo's medicine-men, who "smelt out"witches, were only some two centuries in the rear of ourcivilisation. Three hundred years ago Bishop Jewell, preachingbefore Elizabeth, was quite of the mind of Cetewayo and Saul, as tothe wickedness of suffering a witch to live. As late as 1691, theregister of Holy Island, Northumberland, mentions "William Cleugh,bewitched to death," and the superstition is almost as powerful asever among the rural people. Between July 13 and July 24 (1699) thewidow Comon, in Essex, was thrice swum for a witch. She was notdrowned, but survived her immersion for only five months. Asingular homicide is recorded at Newington Butts, 1689. "John Arrisand Derwick Farlin in one grave, being both Dutch soldiers; onekilled the other drinking brandy." But who slew the slayer? Theregister is silent; but "often eating a shoulder of mutton or a peckof hasty pudding at a time caused the death of James Parsons," atTeddington, in Middlesex, 1743. Parsons had resisted the effects ofshoulders of mutton and hasty pudding till the age of thirty-six.

And so the registers run on. Sometimes they tell of the death of aglutton, sometimes of a GRACE WYFE (grosse femme). Now the belltolls for the decease of a duke, now of a "dog-whipper.""Lutenists" and "Saltpetremen"--the skeleton of the old Germanallegory whispers to each and twitches him by the sleeve. "EllisThompson, insipiens," leaves Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbledand scrabbled on the doors, and follows "William, foole to my LadyJerningham," and "Edward Errington, the Towne's Fooll" (Newcastle-on-Tyne) down the way to dusty death. Edward Errington died "of thepest," and another idiot took his place and office, for Newcastlehad her regular town fools before she acquired her singularlyadvanced modern representatives. The "aquavity man" dies (inCripplegate), and the "dumb-man who was a fortune-teller" (Stepney,1628), and the "King's Falkner," and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combinedthe professions, not frequently united, of "attorney andhusbandman," in Barwell, Leicestershire (1655). "The lame chimney-sweeper," and the "King of the gypsies," and Alexander Willis, "quicalographiam docuit," the linguist, and the Tom o' Bedlam, thecomfit-maker, and the panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and thesuicide, they all found death; or, if they sought him, thechurchyard where they were "hurled into a grave" was interdicted,and purified, after a fortnight, with "frankincense and sweetperfumes, and herbs."