Registers, PARISH. The place which parish registers now fill was formerly, but only in very small part, supplied by monastic registers, which, however, as a rule registered only deaths of important persons, so as to be able to tell when masses became due, and were usually confined to the families of founders, benefactors, and the like. Entries were also sometimes made in the missals of parish churches, and the monastic chronicles often contain necrologies, whilst mortuary rolls were regularly sent round from monastery to monastery.
These were in effect the sole early public registers, but private necrologies were sometimes kept by the chaplains of great families—e.g. Friar Brackley has left one of the Pastons and Mawtbys—and Burn (History of Parish Registers) mentions several entered in the flyleaves of private books of devotion. But it is mainly to the monastic cartularies and to inquisitions post-mortem and proofs of age that we must go for information on births and deaths of the pre-Reformation times.
It is probable that the injunction of Thomas Cromwell in 1538, ordering parish registers to be kept under the system now in vogue, was intended, like Edward VI.'s scholastic foundations, to meet one of the immediate difficulties involved in the suppression of the monasteries. Had this injunction been strictly acted on we should now be in possession of complete registers from that date onwards. But, perhaps owing to the fall, soon after, of the author of the injunction or to the general laxity of the incumbents, very little heed was taken of it, and the evil which this neglect entailed became so crying that Elizabeth in 1597 issued a stringent order that not only should the registers be better kept, but copies of them should be yearly sent to the bishop of the diocese, an order which in 1812 was supplemented by an act enjoining the preservation, arrangement, and indexing alphabetically of the names on the registers. But nothing has been of much value against the incorrigible neglect of the incumbents and bishops. Early transcripts are practically non-existent, and even those of the 18th century are most imperfect. In the returns of the population abstracts in 1801 it was discovered that amongst 11,000 parishes in England 812 registers dating from 1538 alone existed, and later returns in 1834 showed that even that small number had decreased through the negligence of the clergy in the interval. These last returns give full details as to the date of the commencement of each register in England. The only hope in the future for the preservation of the remnant lies in the instant removal from the parish churches (or, as is too often the case, the incumbent's library) of the actual registers and of the transcripts from the bishops' registers to the Public Record Office or to some kindred institution, otherwise further loss must be expected in spite of the fact that many of the clergy are at last waking up to their duty in the matter and many have transcribed and indexed their registers, while some have been printed by the Harleian Society and by private individuals.
A full list of the printed registers was issued in 1891 by Dr G. W. Marshall. Other standard works on the subject are Bigland's Observations on Parish Registers (1764) and Burn's History of Parish Registers (1829; 2d ed. 1862), while brochures on the same subject have been printed by Mr Chester-Waters (1870; new ed. 1887) and Mr Taswell-Langmead.
From these works the reader may see how the registers often contain much valuable information as to the history of the parish, many incumbents slightly overstepping their strict duty by putting down noticeable and curious incidents which occurred from time to time. The proper fees for searching are one shilling for the first year (which includes births, marriages, and burials, though some clergymen try to charge them separately) and sixpence every subsequent year. It seems doubtful if the searcher may take general notes, but he may copy one entry per year without being compelled to pay the further fee of 2s. 7d. which is the clergyman's due if he is asked to give a certified copy. Most custodians of registers, however, are extremely liberal, and seldom take fees when the object of the search is a literary one.