≫ Download Gratis THE PARISH REGISTERS OF ENGLAND [1910] eBook J Charles Cox

THE PARISH REGISTERS OF ENGLAND [1910] eBook J Charles Cox

Download As PDF : THE PARISH REGISTERS OF ENGLAND [1910] eBook J Charles Cox

IT is just half a century since I began, in the year 1860, making extracts from parish registers in West Somerset, where my father was beneficed, a pursuit followed up with some success a few years later in my own county of Derbyshire. At that time
the only work on the subject was The History of Parish Registers in England, by Mr. J. S. Burn, published in 1829. A second edition, considerably extended, was issued in 1862. With the latter were incorporated the salient points of the same writer's brief book entitled History of the Fleet Registers. Mr. Burn's book, long since out of print, is still of value, and contains a variety of legal information, but it is ill digested throughout and confusedly
arranged.
In 1870 Mr. R. E. Chester Waters reprinted a pamphlet on parish registers from the pages of The Home and Foreign Review. A few years later, I learnt, through a friend, of Mr. Waters' intention to extend and reprint his treatise, and, knowing how he was crippled by infirmities, I put a variety of extracts at his disposal and gave some assistance in other ways. The book issued by Mr. Chester Waters in 1882, under the title of Parish Registers in England, their History and Contents, had become
expanded from a pamphlet of three sheets into a compact little volume of 122 pages. This work, a great improvement upon the straggling chapters of Burn's bigger book, was much appreciated, especially by the clergy ; but it has been long out of print, and difficult to procure through second-hand agencies.

Meanwhile, I kept steadily before my mind the hope of producing a book which, whilst based upon the labours of my predecessors, Burn and Waters, should strike out a wider line of its own, and aim at a better arrangement and at a fuller explanation of unusual points. At last, after many interruptions,
literary and otherwise, the idea has matured, and these pages are put forth with a fair amount of hope that they may prove useful and helpful to those who desire to have a better understanding of parochial registers.