WHAT ARE PARISH REGISTERS?
Registers of Church of England baptism, marriage and burials.
PARISH REGISTERS AND FAMILY HISTORIANS
Parish Registers are of immense value for their recording of significant pre-civil registration family events. Although standards of record keeping in early registers may have varied with the whims of the record keeper, luckily for family historians, later legislation did bring about improvements.
As Registers are arranged by parish and each church has its own register, when looking for an ancestor's records, you will need to know their church and parish. Indexed transcriptions and online search resources are useful initial finding aids and then a sight of the actual registers will verify the information. See below: Where To Find Parish Registers
It should be noted that Parish Registers most often give a date of baptism, not a birth date, and don't give the date of death, but the date of burial.
It should also be noted that churches outside of the Church of England (e.g. Non-Conformists) will have their own records, as do non-Christian religions.
HISTORY OF PARISH REGISTERS
Although they had existed in various forms previously, Thomas Cromwell decided in 1538 that formal records should be kept in parish registers. There were three main reasons for the keeping of these records.
- To provide evidence for inheritance purposes
- To prevent forbidden marriages e.g. incestuous marriages.
- To calculate the population for tax purposes.
The registers were to be completed by the Church on a weekly basis but the routine wasn't always popular and those clergymen who did have a higher degree of literacy, often wrote in a hand more artistic then legible.
THE PARISH CHEST - Each parish was obliged to house the registers in a parish chest with two locks. One key was kept by the parson, the second being kept in the joint custody of the churchwardens.
Early parish registers were written on loose sheets of paper and towards the end of 16th century it was ordered that these be copied into parchment books. A mammoth task which resulted in some parish records being abbreviated or even missed out altogether. Also, many of the loose sheets couldn't be found.
Parish chests were usually sturdy storage containers and papers and documents stored inside, although maybe untidy, were preserved reasonably well.
BISHOPS’ TRANSCRIPTS – In addition to transcribing earlier records, incumbents and parish clerks had to send a transcription of the previous year's register entries to the relevant Diocesan Registry. Unfortunately for today's family historians, these overworked scribes didn't always fulfill their duties.
Download a bishop's transcript (483KB) of baptisms (image courtesy of Lancashire Record Office ref PR361/1/9
Further bad news for family historians is that the transcripts were often kept in poor conditions and many deteriorated. Enemy action during World War II also destroyed further records.
The good news is that some early parish records and Bishops’ transcripts do survive. There is more information at the end of the page.
17th CENTURY RECORDS – in 1645, while the Civil War still raged, parishes and chapelry were given the job of providing a vellum register to record the dates of baptisms, with a new requirement that the date of birth and the parents’ names be included. Burial records were also required to give the date of death.
Again, the burden to complete the registers wasn't always done efficiency or effectively and on 29 September 1653 an Act of Parliament gave the custody of registers to registrars elected by ratepayers of the parish. Sometimes these records were written in the old parish register, sometimes in new volumes, but standards of record keeping remained low.
Towards the end of the 17th century Parliament introduced duties on the recording of family events to raise money for the war in France. These were as follows:
2s* per birth
2s 6d* per marriage
4s per burial of a non pauper
A siding scale of charges set a limit of:
£30 for the birth of an eldest son of a Duke
£50 for the marriage of a Duke
£50 for the burial of a Duke
£20 for people having a real estate of £50 or more per year, or a personal estate of £600 or more.
There was a penalty of 40s if a birth wasn't notified within 5 days
Incumbents were paid a fee of 6d to record the events, and if they didn't, faced a penalty of 40s.
*For more information about the value of pre-decimal coinage click on this link:
http://www.royalmint.com/RoyalMint/web/site/Corporate/Corp_british_coinage/british_coinage.asp
These charges did go some way towards improving standards of record keeping,
with some incumbents taking the trouble to chase up forgetful parishioners.
Further efficiency came in 1711 when an Act of Parliament required events be
recorded in registers with ruled and numbered pages.
Download burial
certificate dated 1725 image courtesy of Lancashire Record Office
(Ref DDX/206/28)
18th CENTURY RECORDS – The need for civil registration was being argued constantly but legislation was still a few generations away. It lay to Hardwicke's Act of 1754 to bring about better record keeping, at least with regard to marriages. The Act required records of both banns and marriages are kept by churchwardens in 'proper books of vellum or good and durable paper.' Entries had to be written in a precise form with standardised information. The Act also required that registers be 'carefully kept and preserved for public use.'
The Act also stipulated churches needed a license to conduct marriage
ceremonies. Some 'unlawful' churches did conduct marriages and their records
will be separate from the main body of records.
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A 19th Century baptismal
Certificate Image courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local Studies |
19th CENTURY RECORDS – George Rose's Act which was enacted on New Year's Day 1812 saw registration moving significantly towards clear and concise record keeping. The Act required that entries should be made in a uniform manner in separate baptism, marriage and burial registers prepared by the King's Printers. Registers were to be kept in a 'dry, well-painted, iron chest, in some dry and secure place, either at the parsonage or in the church.' Incumbents were then required to submit vellum transcripts to the registrar at the end of each year.
In England and Wales civil registration of family events began in 1837 (1855 in Scotland, 1864 in Ireland) and today indexes of entries can be found in family history research centres.
NONCONFORMIST REGISTERS
Non-conformists are denominations outside of the established Church of England. These may be Catholics, Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Unitarians. Jews and Quakers kept separate registers.
Non-conformists did sometimes use the Church of England, especially for marriages between 1754 and 1837 when Hardwicke’s Marriage Act placed restrictions on where marriages could take place.
After Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 many Non-conformists chose to marry by licence, so although they’d be legally married, they weren’t obliged to attend Church of England services to hear their banns being called. If there is a note in an Anglican parish register indicating a marriage by licence, this may indicate a nonconformist, especially if no baptisms follow. Quakers and Jews kept meticulous records and were allowed to continue with their own record keeping.
Many births were registered with Dr William’s Library in London between 1742 and 1837. These registers list protestant dissenter births (Baptists, Presbyterians, Independent Congregationalists).
Non-Conformist registers had to be handed over to the state after 1840 and these can now be found at online at <http://www.bmdregisters.co.uk/>. Some churches did hold onto their registers, but these should have eventually found their way into Record Offices.
More information on the records that can be found in Non-conformist registers see: http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/frc/research/nonconformistsmain.htm
Other Religions
For information on searching for registers of non-Christian religions see: http://www.movinghere.org.uk/default.htm
WHERE TO FIND PARISH REGISTERS
Churches today do still keep parish records and if a record can't be found in the civil registration indexes, you may find it in a parish register. Although some are still be held by the church, where you'll be able to go and along to see them, most have been deposited for safe keeping in the appropriate diocesan record office, where you can again arrange to see the records.
The whereabouts of parish records can be found in Bishops' Transcripts and Marriage Licences, in the Gibson's Guides for Genealogists published by the Federation of Family History Societies http://www.genfair.com/shop/pages/fed/index.html
The Society of Genealogists has a collection of parish registers and indexes in various forms. www.sog.org.uk/prc
The National Archives hold records of the following: Wesleyan Methodist Metropolitan Registry (est. 1818); Protestant Dissenters' Registry (established 1742); Catholic registers and Quakers registers. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Some family history societies publish transcripts of parish records for their area. www.ffhs.org.uk
Local family history centres and record offices may have copies of registers on fiche or microfilm
Transcripts of baptism and marriage parish records (no burials) including Non-conformist registers (not Quakers) can be found on the IGI at: www.familysearch.org
For a database of catalogues held in English archives, see: www.a2a.org.uk
See also: Registration & Census on this server
INFORMATION HELD IN PARISH REGISTERS
For more on the information that can be found in parish registers see: http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/topics/religious_print.htm
