In this parish the date of the oldest register is 1560, many of the earlier years being evidently copied by the same hand. An entry of the death of Mr. Edward Hurdman, who was the last Bailiff and first Mayor of this city, occurs in 1621: his effigy and that of his wife, in the attitude of prayer, still remain in an arched niche to the south of the chancel. In 1638 is recorded the death of widow Evitt, who buried her husband and her three children of the plague the year before. The dreadful year 1637 was memorable for the fact that in this city no less than 1551 persons died of the plague in ten months, being probably one third of the inhabitants (See "Worcester in Olden Times," p. 198). On March 20, 1645, is recorded the burial of a Mr. Richard Chetell, who is said by a local historian to have been hung before his own door in those troublous times of Civil War, and to have had a flat stone placed to his memory near the south aisle of the church, bearing an inscription to his memory as "the masacred gent." who died March 19, 1645. Comparing the register with the date of death recorded on the tombstone, so sudden an interment would give an air of probability to the tradition. The coat of arms at the bottom of the slab evidently belongs to the family of a Mrs. Rebecca Kyrle, who seems to have been buried in the same vault in 1693. "Collins's fire," an extraordinary event which took place in October, 1703, is entered in a red ink or pencil mark, and the register records that, "James Collins, his wife Ann, with seven children, Ann, James, Thomas, Mary, Charles, Catharine, and Samuel, all which nine persons were burnt together in the fire that burnt their house." This was a singular story. Collins's maid-servant was the only inhabitant of the house who escaped from the fire, but she sustained a broken limb. Afterwards she went into the service of Mrs. Palmer, of Upton Snodsbury, a lady who lived on her property. Mrs. Palmer had a son who was connected with a gang of villains, and in order to obtain her money these wretches murdered Mrs. Palmer and her maid, and burnt the house down. So the poor girl escaped from one fire only to fall into another. The murderers were hung in chains, and Palmer's estates were forfeited to the Bishop of Worcester, who applied one of them to found a school (still existing as Bishop Lloyd's) at Worcester, and the other to charitable uses.