il les tuait.'" The public of England mistrusted, in the matter of
parish registers, the generous heart of Henry VIII. It is the fixed
conviction of the public that all novelties in administration mean
new taxes. Thus the Croatian peasantry were once on the point of
revolting because they imagined that they were to be taxed in
proportion to the length of their moustaches. The English believed,
and the insurgents of the famous Pilgrimage of Grace declared, that
baptism was to be refused to all children who did not pay a
"trybette" (tribute) to the king. But Henry, or rather his
minister, Cromwell, stuck to his plan, and (September 29, 1538)
issued an injunction that a weekly register of weddings,
christenings, and burials should be kept by the curate of every
parish. The cost of the book (twopence in the case of St.
Margaret's, Westminster) was defrayed by the parishioners. The
oldest extant register books are those thus acquired in 1597 or
1603. These volumes were of parchment, and entries were copied into
them out of the old books on paper. The copyists, as we have seen,
were indolent, and omitted characteristic points in the more ancient
records.

In the civil war parish registers fell into some confusion, and when
the clergy did make entries they commonly expressed their political
feelings in a mixture of Latin and English. Latin, by the way, went
out as Protestantism came in, but the curate of Rotherby, in
Leicestershire, writes, "Bellum, Bellum, Bellum, interruption!
persecution!" At St. Bridget's, in Chester, is the quaint entry,
"1643. Here the register is defective till 1653. The tymes were
SUCH!" At Hilton, in Dorset, William Snoke, minister, entered his
opinion that persons whose baptism and marriage were not registered
"will be made uncapable of any earthly inheritance if they live.