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prayers for the dead in the old registers were omitted by the copyist, who seemed to think (as the contractor for "sandwich men" said to the poor fellows who carried the letter H), "I don't want you, and the public don't want you, and you're no use to nobody." Again, when Laurence Fletcher was buried in St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1608, the old register described him as "a player, the King's servant." But the clerk, keeping a note-book, simply called Laurence Fletcher "a man," and (in 1625) he also styled Mr. John Fletcher "a man." Now, the old register calls Mr. John Fletcher "a poet." To copy all the parish registers in England would be a very serious task, and would probably be but slovenly performed. If they were reproduced, again, by any process of photography, the old difficult court hand would remain as hard as ever. But this is a minor objection, for the local antiquary revels in the old court hand.
From the little volume by Mr. Chester Waters, already referred to ('Parish Registers in England;' printed for the author by F. J. Roberts, Little Britain, E.C.), we proceed to appropriate such matters of curiosity as may interest minds neither parochial nor doggedly antiquarian. Parish registers among the civilised peoples of antiquity do not greatly concern us. It seems certain that many Polynesian races have managed to record (in verse, or by some rude marks) the genealogies of their chiefs through many hundreds of years. These oral registers are accepted as fairly truthful by some students, yet we must remember that Pindar supposed himself to possess knowledge of at least twenty-five generations before his own time, and that only brought him up to the birth of Jason. Nobody believes in Jason and Medea, and possibly the genealogical records of Maoris and Fijians are as little trustworthy as those of Pindaric Greece. However, to consider 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'etait un coeur genereux, 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,