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, 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 regime 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 "FREEGIFTMabbe."
