Books and Bookmen [6]
coloured ink, and generally manipulates the register
as a Greek manages his hand at ecarte, or as a Hebrew dealer in
Moabite bric-a-brac treats a synagogue roll. We well remember one
villain who had locked himself into the vestry (he was disguised as
an archaeologist), and who was enjoying his wicked pleasure with the
register, when the vestry somehow caught fire, the rusty key would
not turn in the door, and the villain was roasted alive, in spite of
the disinterested efforts to save him made by all the virtuous
characters in the story. Let the fate of this bold, bad man be a
warning to wicked earls, baronets, and all others who attempt to
destroy the record of the marriage of a hero's parents. Fate will
be too strong for them in the long run, though they bribe the parish
clerk, or carry off in white wax an impression of the keys of the
vestry and of the iron chest in which a register should repose.
There is another and more prosaic danger in the way of villains, if
the new bill, entitled "The Parish Registers Preservation Act," ever
becomes law. The bill provides that every register earlier than
1837 shall be committed to the care of the Master of the Rolls, and
removed to the Record Office. Now the common villain of fiction
would feel sadly out of place in the Register Office, where a more
watchful eye than that of a comic parish clerk would be kept on his
proceedings. Villains and local antiquaries will, therefore, use
all their parliamentary influence to oppose and delay this bill,
which is certainly hard on the parish archaeologist. The men who
grub in their local registers, and slowly compile parish or county
history, deserve to be encouraged rather than depressed. Mr.
Chester Waters, therefore, has suggested that copies of registers
should be made, and the comparatively legible copy left in the
parish, while the crabbed original is conveyed to the Record Office
in London. Thus the local antiquary would really have his work made
more easy for him (though it may be doubted whether he would quite
enjoy that condescension), while the villain of romance would be
foiled; for it is useless (as a novel of Mr. Christie Murray's
proves) to alter the register in the keeping of the parish when the
original document is safe in the Record Office. But previous
examples of enforced transcription (as in 1603) do not encourage us
to suppose that the copies would be very scrupulously made. Thus,
after the Reformation, the 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
as a Greek manages his hand at ecarte, or as a Hebrew dealer in
Moabite bric-a-brac treats a synagogue roll. We well remember one
villain who had locked himself into the vestry (he was disguised as
an archaeologist), and who was enjoying his wicked pleasure with the
register, when the vestry somehow caught fire, the rusty key would
not turn in the door, and the villain was roasted alive, in spite of
the disinterested efforts to save him made by all the virtuous
characters in the story. Let the fate of this bold, bad man be a
warning to wicked earls, baronets, and all others who attempt to
destroy the record of the marriage of a hero's parents. Fate will
be too strong for them in the long run, though they bribe the parish
clerk, or carry off in white wax an impression of the keys of the
vestry and of the iron chest in which a register should repose.
There is another and more prosaic danger in the way of villains, if
the new bill, entitled "The Parish Registers Preservation Act," ever
becomes law. The bill provides that every register earlier than
1837 shall be committed to the care of the Master of the Rolls, and
removed to the Record Office. Now the common villain of fiction
would feel sadly out of place in the Register Office, where a more
watchful eye than that of a comic parish clerk would be kept on his
proceedings. Villains and local antiquaries will, therefore, use
all their parliamentary influence to oppose and delay this bill,
which is certainly hard on the parish archaeologist. The men who
grub in their local registers, and slowly compile parish or county
history, deserve to be encouraged rather than depressed. Mr.
Chester Waters, therefore, has suggested that copies of registers
should be made, and the comparatively legible copy left in the
parish, while the crabbed original is conveyed to the Record Office
in London. Thus the local antiquary would really have his work made
more easy for him (though it may be doubted whether he would quite
enjoy that condescension), while the villain of romance would be
foiled; for it is useless (as a novel of Mr. Christie Murray's
proves) to alter the register in the keeping of the parish when the
original document is safe in the Record Office. But previous
examples of enforced transcription (as in 1603) do not encourage us
to suppose that the copies would be very scrupulously made. Thus,
after the Reformation, the 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