thus is to consider too curiously.  We only know for certain that genealogy very soon becomes important, and, therefore, that records are early kept, in a growing civilisation.  “After Nehemiah’s return from the captivity in Babylon, the priests at Jerusalem whose register was not found were as polluted put from the priesthood.”  Rome had her parish registers, which were kept in the temple of Saturn.  But modern parish registers were “discovered” (like America) in 1497, when Cardinal Ximenes found it desirable to put on record the names of the godfathers and godmothers of baptised children.  When these relations of “gossip,” or God’s kin (as the word literally means), were not certainly known, married persons could easily obtain divorces, by pretending previous spiritual relationship.

But it was only during the reign of Mary, (called the Bloody) that this rule of registering godfathers and godmothers prevailed in England.  Henry VIII. introduced the custom of parish registers when in a Protestant humour.  By the way, how curiously has Madame de Flamareil (la femme de quarante ans, in Charles de Bernard’s novel) anticipated the verdict of Mr. Froude on Henry VIII.!  ‘On accuse Henri VIII.,’ dit Madame de Flamareil, “moi je le comprends, et je l’absous; c’était un cœur généreux, lorsqu’il ne les aimait plus, il les tuait.’”  The public of England mistrusted, in the matter of parish registers, the generous heart of Henry VIII.  It is the fixed conviction of the public that all novelties in administration mean new taxes.  Thus the Croatian peasantry were once on the point of revolting because they imagined that they were to be taxed in proportion to the length of their moustaches.  The English believed, and the insurgents of the famous Pilgrimage of Grace declared, that baptism was to be refused to all children who did not pay a “trybette” (tribute) to the king.  But Henry, or rather his minister, Cromwell, stuck to his plan, and (September 29, 1538) issued an injunction that a weekly register of weddings, christenings, and burials should be kept by the curate of every parish.  The cost of the book (twopence in the case of St. Margaret’s, Westminster) was defrayed by the parishioners.  The oldest extant register books are those thus acquired in 1597 or 1603.  These volumes were of parchment, and entries were copied into them out of the old books on paper.  The copyists, as we have seen, were indolent, and omitted characteristic points in the more ancient records.

In the civil war parish registers fell into some confusion, and when the clergy did make entries they commonly expressed their political feelings in a mixture of Latin and English.  Latin, by the way, went out as Protestantism came in, but the curate of Rotherby, in Leicestershire, 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 were such!”  At Hilton, in Dorset, William Snoke, minister, entered his opinion 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 may doubt whether these parishioners found the information thus conveyed highly satisfactory.

The register of Maid’s Moreton, Bucks, tells how the reading-desk (a spread eagle, gilt) was “doomed to perish as an abominable idoll;” and how the cross on the steeple nearly (but not quite) knocked out the brains of the Puritan who removed it.  The Puritans had their way with the registers as well as with the eagle (“the vowl,” as the old country people call it), and laymen took the place of parsons as registrars in 1653.  The books from 1653 to 1660, while this régime lasted, “were kept exceptionally well,” new brooms sweeping clean.  The books of the period contain fewer of the old Puritan Christian names than we might have expected.  We find, “Repente Kytchens,” so styled before the poor little thing had anything but original sin to repent of.  “Faint not Kennard” is also registered, and “Freegift Mabbe.”

A novelty was introduced into registers in 1678.  The law required (for purposes of protecting trade) that all the dead should be buried in woollen winding-sheets.  The price of the wool was the obolus paid to the Charon of the Revenue.  After March 25, 1667, no person was to be “buried in any shirt, shift, or sheet other that should be made of woole only.”  Thus when the children in a little Oxfordshire village lately beheld a ghost, “dressed in a long narrow gown of woollen, with bandages round the head and chin,” it is clear that the ghost was much more than a hundred years old, for the act “had fallen into disuse long before it was repealed in 1814.”  But this has little to do with parish registers.  The addition made to the duties of the keeper of the register in 1678 was this—he had to take and record the affidavit of a kinsman of the dead, to the effect that the corpse was actually buried in woollen fabric.  The upper classes, however, preferred to bury in linen, and to pay the fine of 5l.  When Mistress Oldfield, the famous actress, was interred in 1730, her body was arrayed “in a very fine Brussels lace headdress, a holland shift with a tucker and double ruffles of the same 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 the insurgents in the Pilgrimage of Grace.  The tax collectors had access without payment of fee to the registers.  The registration of births was discontinued when the Taxation Acts expired.  An attempt to introduce the registration of births was made in 1753, but unsuccessfully.  The public had the old superstitious dread of anything like a census.  Moreover, the custom was denounced as “French,” and therefore abominable.  In the same way it was thought telling to call the clôture “the French gag” during some recent discussions of parliamentary rules.  In 1783 the parish register was again made the instrument of taxation, and threepence was charged on every entry.  Thus “the clergyman was placed in the invidious light of a tax collector, and as the poor were often unable or unwilling to pay the tax, the clergy had a direct inducement to retain their good-will by keeping the registers defective.”

It is easy to imagine the indignation in Scotland when “bang went saxpence” every time a poor man had twins!  Of course the Scotch rose up against this unparalleled extortion.  At last, in 1812, “Rose’s Act” was passed.  It is styled “an Act for the better regulating and preserving registers of births,” but the registration of births is altogether omitted from its provisions.  By a stroke of the wildest wit the penalty of transportation for fourteen years, for making a false entry, “is to be divided equally between the informer and the poor of the parish.”  A more casual Act has rarely been drafted.

Without entering into the modern history of parish registers, we may borrow a few of the ancient curiosities to be found therein, the blunders and the waggeries of forgotten priests, and curates, and parish clerks.  In quite recent times (1832) it was thought worth while to record that Charity Morrell at her wedding had signed her name in the register with her right foot, and that the ring had been placed on the fourth toe of her left foot; for poor Charity was born without arms.  Sometimes the time of a birth was recorded with much minuteness, that the astrologers might draw a more accurate horoscope.  Unlucky children, with no acknowledged fathers, were entered in a variety of odd ways.  In Lambeth (1685), George Speedwell is put down as “a merry begot;” Anne Twine is “filia uniuscujusque.”  At Croydon, a certain William is “terraefilius”