In reference to the observations of your correspondent "E.R.J.H.," he
will find, upon closer examination, that no comparison approaching to
accuracy can be made between the population of any place at different
periods of the seventeenth century, founded upon the entries in parish
registers of baptisms, births, or marriages. In 1653 the ecclesiastical
registers ceased to contain much of the information they had before
given. In that year was passed, "An Act how Marriages shall be
solemnised and registered, and also for a Register of Births and
Burials;" which first introduced registers of births and not of
baptisms. The Act treated marriage as a civil contract, to be solemnised
before a justice of the peace; and it directed that, for the entry of
all marriages, and "of all births of children, and burial of all sorts
of people, within every parish," the rated inhabitants should choose "an
honest and able person to be called 'The Parish Register,'" sworn before
and approved by a neighbouring magistrate. Until after the Restoration,
this Act was found practicable; and in many parishes these books
(distinct from the clergyman's register of baptisms, &c., celebrated in
the church) continue to be fairly preserved. In such parishes, and in no
others, a correct comparative estimate of the population may be formed.
The value of the parochial registers for statistical and historical
purposes cannot be overrated; and yet their great loss in very recent
times is beyond all doubt. It was given in evidence before the committee
on registration, that out of seventy or eighty parishes for which
Bridges made collections a century since, thirteen of the old registers
have been lost, and three accidentally burnt. On a comparison of the
dates of the Sussex registers, seen by Sir W. Burrell between 1770 and
1780, and of those returned as the earliest in the population returns of
1831, the old registers, in no less than twenty-nine parishes, had in
the interval disappeared; whilst, during the same half-century, nineteen
old registers had found their way back to the proper repository. On
searching the MSS. in Skelton Castle, in Cleveland, a few years since,
the first register of that parish was discovered, and has been restored.
These changes show how great the danger is to which the old registers
are exposed; and in many instances it saves time and trouble to search
the Bishop's transcripts before searching the original registers.