Foremost under this head come PARISH REGISTERS. Burn’s “History of Parish Registers in England” is the standard work on this subject. The first mandate for keeping registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials, in each parish was issued in 1538, but it is quite the exception to find registers of this early date. This mandate was repeated in more rigorous terms on the accession of Elizabeth, 1558, but not being regularly observed, it was ordained in 1597 that parchment register books should be purchased at the expense of each parish, and that all the names from the older books (mostly of paper) should be therein transcribed from 1558; hence it happens that so many parish registers begin with that year. It was at the same time ordered that copies of the registers should be annually forwarded to the episcopal registrar, to be preserved in the episcopal archives. This injunction, however, was so imperfectly carried out, and the duplicates when forwarded were so carelessly kept, that the diocesan copies of registers are mere fragments of what they should be, and are in several cases still in such confusion as to be practically inaccessible. The earliest transcripts at Lincoln begin in 1587, and at Gloucester in 1571, but there are few dioceses that have any earlier than 1660. Many parishes have lost their early registers, and they are usually deficient or wanting during the Commonwealth. Official inquiries were made of all the clergy in 1831, as to the exact date, condition, and number of the parish registers in their custody, and abstracts of their replies were published in a Blue Book in 1833. But it is not generally known that the returns themselves, often containing more information than was printed, are at the British Museum (Add. MSS. 9,335, etc.). The dates there given are not, however, to be implicitly relied upon, as unfortunately some registers have been lost or stolen since that date, whilst others of an earlier date have happily, in some cases, been restored or discovered in the like period. Registers should be carefully looked through, not only for the purpose of extracting the names of prominent or interesting families, but also for the purpose of gleaning the innumerable little scraps of local information that were not unfrequently interpolated in the earlier pages, such as notes pertaining to excommunication, licenses for eating flesh in Lent, penance, remarkable or eccentric characters, storms, and weather observations, inventories of church goods, visitations of the plague or sweating sickness, national events, etc., etc.