THE DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD DOCUMENTS
The history of England is enshrined in its ancient documents. Some of
it may be read in its stone walls and earthworks. The builders of our
churches stamped its story on their stones, and by the shape of arch
and design of window, by porch and doorway, tower and buttress you can
read the history of the building and tell its age and the dates of its
additions and alterations. Inscriptions, monuments, and brasses help
to fill in the details; but all would be in vain if we had no
documentary evidence, no deeds and charters, registers and wills, to
help us to build up the history of each town and monastery, castle and
manor. Even after the most careful searches in the Record Office and
the British Museum it is very difficult oftentimes to trace a manorial
descent. You spend time and labour, eyesight and midnight oil in
trying to discover missing links, and very often it is all in vain;
the chain remains broken, and you cannot piece it together. Some of us
whose fate it is to have to try and solve some of these genealogical
problems, and spend hours over a manorial descent, are inclined to
envy other writers who fill their pages _currente calamo_ and are
ignorant of the joys and disappointments of research work.
In the making of the history of England patient research and the
examination of documents are, of course, all-important. In the parish
chest, in the municipal charters and records, in court rolls, in the
muniment-rooms of guilds and city companies, of squire and noble, in
the Record Office, Pipe Rolls, Close Rolls, royal letters and papers,
etc., the real history of the country is contained. Masses of Rolls
and documents of all kinds have in these late years been arranged,
printed, and indexed, enabling the historical student to avail himself
of vast stores of information which were denied to the historian of an
earlier age, or could only be acquired by the expenditure of immense
toil.
Nevertheless, we have to deplore the disappearance of large numbers of
priceless manuscripts, the value of which was not recognized by their
custodians. Owing to the ignorance and carelessness of these keepers
of historic documents vast stores have been hopelessly lost or
destroyed, and have vanished with much else of the England that is
vanishing. We know of a Corporation--that of Abingdon, in Berkshire,
the oldest town in the royal county and anciently its most
important--which possessed an immense store of municipal archives.
These manuscript books would throw light upon the history of the
borough; but in their wisdom the members of the Corporation decided
that they should be sold for waste paper! A few gentlemen were deputed
to examine the papers in order to see if anything was worth
preserving. They spent a few hours on the task, which would have
required months for even a cursory inspection, and much expert
knowledge, which these gentlemen did not possess, and reported that
there was nothing in the documents of interest or importance, and the
books and papers were sold to a dealer. Happily a private gentleman
purchased the "waste paper," which remains in his hands, and was not
destroyed: but this example only shows the insecurity of much of the
material upon which local and municipal history depends.
Court rolls, valuable wills and deeds are often placed by noble owners
and squires in the custody of their solicitors. They repose in peace
in safes or tin boxes with the name of the client printed on them.
Recent legislation has made it possible to prove a title without
reference to all the old deeds. Hence the contents of these boxes are
regarded only as old lumber and of no value. A change is made in the
office. The old family solicitor dies, and the new man proceeds with
the permission of his clients to burn all these musty papers, which
are of immense value in tracing the history of a manor or of a family.
Some years ago a leading family solicitor became bankrupt. His office
was full of old family deeds and municipal archives. What happened? A
fire was kindled in the garden, and for a whole fortnight it was fed
with parchment deeds and rolls, many of them of immense value to the
genealogist and the antiquary. It was all done very speedily, and no
one had a chance to interfere. This is only one instance of what we
fear has taken place in many offices, the speedy disappearance of
documents which can never be replaced.
From the contents of the parish chests, from churchwardens'
account-books, we learn much concerning the economic history of the
country, and the methods of the administration of local and parochial
government. As a rule persons interested in such matters have to
content themselves with the statements of the ecclesiastical law books
on the subject of the repair of churches, the law of church rates, the
duties of churchwardens, and the constitution and power of vestries.
And yet there has always existed a variety of customs and practices
which have stood for ages on their prescriptive usage with many
complications and minute differentiations. These old account-books and
minute-books of the churchwardens in town and country are a very large
but a very perishable and rapidly perishing treasury of information on
matters the very remembrance of which is passing away. Yet little care
is taken of these books. An old book is finished and filled up with
entries; a new book is begun. No one takes any care of the old book.
It is too bulky for the little iron register safe. A farmer takes
charge of it; his children tear out pages on which to make their
drawings; it is torn, mutilated, and forgotten, and the record
perishes. All honour to those who have transcribed these documents
with much labour and endless pains and printed them. They will have
gained no money for their toil. The public do not show their gratitude
to such laborious students by purchasing many copies, but the
transcribers know that they have fitted another stone in the Temple of
Knowledge, and enabled antiquaries, genealogists, economists, and
historical inquirers to find material for their pursuits.
The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary's, Thame, and some of the most
interesting in the kingdom, are being printed in the _Berks, Bucks,
and Oxon Archæological Journal_. The originals were nearly lost.
Somehow they came into the possession of the Buckinghamshire
Archæological Society. The volume was lent to the late Rev. F. Lee, in
whose library it remained and could not be recovered. At his death it
was sold with his other books, and found its way to the Bodleian
Library at Oxford. There it was transcribed by Mr. Patterson Ellis,
and then went back to the Buckinghamshire Society after its many
wanderings. It dates back to the fifteenth century, and records many
curious items of pre-Reformation manners and customs.
From these churchwardens' accounts we learn how our forefathers raised
money for the expenses of the church and of the parish. Provision for
the poor, mending of roads, the improvement of agriculture by the
killing of sparrows, all came within the province of the vestry, as
well as the care of the church and churchyard. We learn about such
things as "Gatherings" at Hocktide, May-day, All Hallow-day,
Christmas, and Whitsuntide, the men stopping the women on one day and
demanding money, while on the next day the women retaliated, and
always gained more for the parish fund than those of the opposite sex:
Church Ales, the Holy Loaf, Paschal Money, Watching the Sepulchre, the
duties of clerks and clergymen, and much else, besides the general
principles of local self-government, which the vestrymen carried on
until quite recent times. There are few books that provide greater
information or more absorbing interest than these wonderful books of
accounts. It is a sad pity that so many have vanished.
The parish register books have suffered less than the churchwardens'
accounts, but there has been terrible neglect and irreparable loss.
Their custody has been frequently committed to ignorant parish clerks,
who had no idea of their utility beyond their being occasionally the
means of putting a shilling into their pockets for furnishing
extracts. Sometimes they were in the care of an incumbent who was
forgetful, careless, or negligent. Hence they were indifferently kept,
and baptisms, burials, and marriages were not entered as they ought to
have been. In one of my own register books an indignant parson writes
in the year 1768: "There does not appear any one entry of a Baptism,
Marriage, or Burial in the old Register for nine successive years,
viz. from the year 1732 till the year 1741, when this Register
commences." The fact was that the old parchment book beginning A.D.
1553 was quite full and crowded with names, and the rector never
troubled to provide himself with a new one. Fortunately this sad
business took place long before our present septuagenarians were born,
or there would be much confusion and uncertainty with regard to
old-age pensions.
The disastrous period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth caused
great confusion and many defects in the registers. Very often the
rector was turned out of his parish; the intruding minister, often an
ignorant mechanic, cared naught for registers. Registrars were
appointed in each parish who could scarcely sign their names, much
less enter a baptism. Hence we find very frequent gaps in the books
from 1643 to 1660. At Tarporley, Cheshire, there is a break from 1643
to 1648, upon which a sorrowful vicar remarks:--
"This Intermission hapned by reason of the great wars obliterating
memorials, wasting fortunes, and slaughtering persons of all
sorts."
The Parliamentary soldiers amused themselves by tearing out the leaves
in the registers for the years 1604 to the end of 1616 in the parish
of Wimpole, Cambridgeshire.
There is a curious note in the register of Tunstall, Kent. There seems
to have been a superfluity of members of the family of Pottman in this
parish, and the clergyman appears to have been tired of recording
their names in his books, and thus resolves:--
"1557 Mary Pottman nat. & bapt. 15 Apr.
Mary Pottman n. & b. 29 Jan.
Mary Pottman sep. 22 Aug.
1567
From henceforw^{d} I omitt the Pottmans."
Fire has played havoc with parish registers. The old register of
Arborfield, Berkshire, was destroyed by a fire at the rectory. Those
at Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, were burnt in a fire which consumed
two-thirds of the town in 1676, and many others have shared the same
fate. The Spaniards raided the coast of Cornwall in 1595 and burnt the
church at Paul, when the registers perished in the conflagration.
Wanton destruction has caused the disappearance of many parish books.
There was a parish clerk at Plungar in Leicestershire who combined his
ecclesiastical duties with those of a grocer. He found the pages of
the parish register very useful for wrapping up his groceries. The
episcopal registry of Ely seems to have been plundered at some time of
its treasures, as some one purchased a book entitled _Registrum
causarum Consistorii Eliensis de Tempore Domini Thome de Arundele
Episcopi Eliensis_, a large quarto, written on vellum, containing 162
double pages, which was purchased as waste paper at a grocer's shop at
Cambridge together with forty or fifty old books belonging to the
registry of Ely. The early registers at Christ Church, Hampshire, were
destroyed by a curate's wife who had made kettle-holders of them, and
would perhaps have consumed the whole parish archives in this homely
fashion, had not the parish clerk, by a timely interference, rescued
the remainder. One clergyman, being unable to transcribe certain
entries which were required from his registers, cut them out and sent
them by post; and an Essex clerk, not having ink and paper at hand for
copying out an extract, calmly took out his pocket-knife and cut out
two leaves, handing them to the applicant. Sixteen leaves of another
old register were cut out by the clerk, who happened to be a tailor,
in order to supply himself with measures. Tradesmen seem to have found
these books very useful. The marriage register of Hanney, Berkshire,
from 1754 to 1760 was lost, but later on discovered in a grocer's
shop.
Deplorable has been the fate of these old books, so valuable to the
genealogist. Upon the records contained there the possession of much
valuable property may depend. The father of the present writer was
engaged in proving his title to an estate, and required certificates
of all the births, deaths, and marriages that had occurred in the
family during a hundred years. All was complete save the record of one
marriage. He discovered that his ancestor had eloped with a young
lady, and the couple had married in London at a City church. The name
of the church where the wedding was said to have taken place was
suggested to him, but he discovered that it had been pulled down.
However, the old parish clerk was discovered, who had preserved the
books; the entry was found, and all went well and the title to the
estate established. How many have failed to obtain their rights and
just claims through the gross neglect of the keepers or custodians of
parochial documents?
An old register was kept in the drawer of an old table, together with
rusty iron and endless rubbish, by a parish clerk who was a poor
labouring man. Another was said to be so old and "out of date" and so
difficult to read by the parson and his neighbours, that it had been
tossed about the church and finally carried off by children and torn
to pieces. The leaves of an old parchment register were discovered
sewed together as a covering for the tester of a bedstead, and the
daughters of a parish clerk, who were lace-makers, cut up the pages of
a register for a supply of parchment to make patterns for their lace
manufacture. Two Leicestershire registers were rescued, one from the
shop of a bookseller, the other from the corner cupboard of a
blacksmith, where it had lain perishing and unheard of more than
thirty years. The following extract from _Notes and Queries_ tells of
the sad fate of other books:--
"On visiting the village school of Colton it was discovered that
the 'Psalters' of the children were covered with the leaves of the
Parish Register; some of them were recovered, and replaced in the
parish chest, but many were totally obliterated and cut away. This
discovery led to further investigation, which brought to light a
practice of the Parish Clerk and Schoolmaster of the day, who to
certain 'goodies' of the village, gave the parchment leaves for
hutkins for their knitting pins."
Still greater desecration has taken place. The registers of South
Otterington, containing several entries of the great families of
Talbot, Herbert, and Falconer, were kept in the cottage of the parish
clerk, who used all those preceding the eighteenth century for waste
paper, and devoted not a few to the utilitarian employment of singeing
a goose. At Appledore the books were lost through having been kept in
a public-house for the delectation of its frequenters.
But many parsons have kept their registers with consummate care. The
name of the Rev. John Yate, rector of Rodmarton, Gloucestershire, in
1630, should be mentioned as a worthy and careful custodian on account
of his quaint directions for the preservation of his registers. He
wrote in the volume:--
"If you will have this Book last, bee sure to aire it att the
fier or in the Sunne three or foure times a yeare--els it will
grow dankish and rott, therefore look to it. It will not be
amisse when you finde it dankish to wipe over the leaves with a
dry woollen cloth. This place is very much subject to
dankishness, therefore I say looke to it."
Sometimes the parsons adorned their books with their poetical
effusions either in Latin or English. Here are two examples, the first
from Cherry Hinton, Cambridgeshire; the second from Ruyton, Salop:--
Hic puer ætatem, his Vir sponsalia noscat.
Hic decessorum funera quisque sciat.
No Flatt'ry here, where to be born and die
Of rich and poor is all the history.
Enough, if virtue fill'd the space between,
Prov'd, by the ends of being, to have been.
Bishop Kennet urged his clergy to enter in their registers not only
every christening, wedding, or burial, which entries have proved some
of the best helps for the preserving of history, but also any notable
events that may have occurred in the parish or neighbourhood, such as
"storms and lightning, contagion and mortality, droughts, scarcity,
plenty, longevity, robbery, murders, or the like casualties. If such
memorable things were fairly entered, your parish registers would
become chronicles of many strange occurrences that would not otherwise
be known and would be of great use and service for posterity to know."
The clergy have often acted upon this suggestion. In the registers of
Cranbrook, Kent, we find a long account of the great plague that raged
there in 1558, with certain moral reflections on the vice of
"drunkeness which abounded here," on the base characters of the
persons in whose houses the Plague began and ended, on the vehemence
of the infection in "the Inns and Suckling houses of the town, places
of much disorder," and tells how great dearth followed the Plague
"with much wailing and sorrow," and how the judgment of God seemed but
to harden the people in their sin.
The Eastwell register contains copies of the Protestation of 1642, the
Vow and Covenant of 1643, and the Solemn League and Covenant of the
same year, all signed by sundry parishioners, and of the death of the
last of the Plantagenets, Richard by name, a bricklayer by trade, in
1550, whom Richard III acknowledged to be his son on the eve of the
battle of Bosworth. At St. Oswalds, Durham, there is the record of the
hanging and quartering in 1590 of "Duke, Hyll, Hogge and Holyday, iiij
Semynaryes, Papysts, Tretors and Rebels for their horrible offences."
"Burials, 1687 April 17th Georges Vilaus Lord dooke of bookingham," is
the illiterate description of the Duke who was assassinated by Felton
and buried at Helmsley. It is impossible to mention all the gleanings
from parish registers; each parish tells its tale, its trades, its
belief in witchcraft, its burials of soldiers killed in war, its
stories of persecution, riot, sudden deaths, amazing virtues, and
terrible sins. The edicts of the laws of England, wise and foolish,
are reflected in these pages, e.g. the enforced burial in woollen; the
relatives of those who desired to be buried in linen were obliged to
pay fifty shillings to the informer and the same sum to the poor of
the parish. The tax on marriages, births, and burials, levied by the
Government on the estates of gentlemen in 1693, is also recorded in
such entries as the following:--
"1700. Mr. Thomas Cullum buried 27 Dec. As the said Mr. Cullum was a
gentleman, there is 24s. to be paid for his buriall." The practice of
heart-burial is also frequently demonstrated in our books.
Extraordinary superstitions and strong beliefs, the use of talismans,
amulets, and charms, astrological observations, the black art,
scandals, barbarous punishments, weird customs that prevailed at man's
most important ceremonies, his baptism, marriage and burial, the
binding of apprenticeships, obsolete trades, such as that of the
person who is styled "aquavity man" or the "saltpetre man," the mode
of settling quarrels and disputes, duels, sports, games, brawls, the
expenses of supplying a queen's household, local customs and
observances--all these find a place in these amazing records. In
short, there is scarcely any feature of the social life of our
forefathers which is not abundantly set forth in our parish registers.
The loss of them would indeed be great and overwhelming.
As we have said, many of them have been lost by fire and other
casualties, by neglect and carelessness. The guarding of the safety of
those that remain is an anxious problem. Many of us would regret to
part with our registers and to allow them to leave the church or town
or village wherein they have reposed so long. They are part of the
story of the place, and when American ladies and gentlemen come to
find traces of their ancestors they love to see these records in the
village where their forefathers lived, and to carry away with them a
photograph of the church, some ivy from the tower, some flowers from
the rectory garden, to preserve in their western homes as memorials of
the place whence their family came. It would not be the same thing if
they were to be referred to a dusty office in a distant town. Some
wise people say that all registers should be sent to London, to the
Record Office or the British Museum. That would be an impossibility.
The officials of those institutions would tremble at the thought, and
the glut of valuable books would make reference a toil that few could
undertake. The real solution of the difficulty is that county councils
should provide accommodation for all deeds and documents, that all
registers should be transcribed, that copies should be deposited in
the county council depository, and that the originals should still
remain in the parish chest where they have lain for three centuries
and a half.