thereof." When he has done this, nothing more is required by law than that the deed of induction shall be duly signed and witnessed. If then the bishop or archdeacon, should he think proper to perform the induction himself,-which he has a perfect right to do (as the mandate of induction is only addressed to all rectors and vicars of the diocese whatsoever, as by it authorized to act in his place),-should desire to address the parishioners and to hold a religious service, there can be no more objection to it than to any other service; but unless it is certified on the paper on which the mandate is printed that the clergyman has taken legal possession of the church by locking himself into it ALONE, the requirement of the law is not complied with, and no induction has taken place, whatever the ceremony may be called that has been performed.

To return to the subject of registers. I will briefly describe the condition in which I found those of my own parishes, and what I did thereon. Looking first to the oldest volumes, which in both parishes commence in 1558-(the oldest known in England, which I believe are comparatively few in number, commencing in 1538), I found that of St. Denis to be perfect, in thorough preservation, and in its original parchment cover. In St. Antholin's, although there were marks of negligence, and in one case even of the destructive propensity, the clergy had clearly on the whole kept it (considering the vicissitudes through which it had passed) with creditable care. But yet no one of them had ever taken the trouble to do what was one of the first things that I did. I went carefully through it, and noting on a slip of paper the number of every page in which was, e. g., a defacing blot, a long hiatus, and (in one place) half a leaf missing, called on the Diocesan Registrar, who immediately gave me every assistance, produced in five minutes every duplicate in an unbroken series from the very beginning, and kindly gave me a seat in his private room whenever I presented myself with a volume of my register. With his help I soon recovered every missing name, restored every word that was blotted or defaced, replaced, or rather placed in the oldest volume alone of the St. Antholin's register no less than 170 missing names and entries, and restored in some way or other as many, perhaps, as thirty more that were from some cause either quite illegible

The writer finds that he is in error. Since these remarks have gone to press, he has been told of a register in the City of London which goes back to the fourteenth century.

or so defaced that they might have been read two or three different ways, through the remainder of the registers of the two parishes. Thus, I have now under my care the register of two parishes, consisting of some twenty-seven volumes in all, complete from the very beginning down to the present time, with the exception of one period, viz., the last five years of the Commonwealth, 1657 to 1662. During these five years no entry of any kind was either made in the registers or returned to the Diocesan Registry, and in many parishes the blank interval at this period was far longer. In a parish which joins mine the rector, on recovering his register (and most probably his benefice) in 1662, made a note in it to this effect: "This book was forcibly taken away from me by the rebels, and kept for seven years," and attested it by his signature and a date. A very large proportion of the 170 missing names and entries in the one volume of my parish register to which I have alluded, is thus accounted for. The first burial entered in 1601 (the page, a large quarto, containing the entries of three or four years, being signed "John Allen, Rector") is that of "John Hill, parson of St. Antholin's," on April 18th. Thus John Hill had clearly died in the earlier part of April, 1601. It is his signature which verifies every page from the beginning up to September, 1598, thus,—" John Hill, pson." The last two or three entries in 1598 of baptisms, marriages, and burials, are in a different handwriting from all that precede them. Then no more entries of any kind appear till that of the Rev. J. Hill's burial. Most probably, therefore, the Rev. J. Hill was taken ill in September, 1598; found that his curate was making entries as usual in the parish register; jealously denied the right of any one to write in it but himself; and perhaps placed it under lock and key till his death. But the curate in charge had evidently made the entries somewhere, and had regularly sent the copies to the Diocesan Registry, for there they all were; and by the courtesy of the registrar, I transcribed them all into the very pages in which they ought to have been originally entered, and which the rector who succeeded John Hill appears to have left blank for this very purpose, on the chance that some day some one would take the trouble to do it. Why was it left undone till 1870? And are the clergy of a time in which such care is taken, those who should be deprived of documents, their care of which shows that they value them for their own sake, and appreciate their importance for the sake of the public?

I have mentioned that in one place half a leaf had been cut away. I got a fresh piece of parchment, and putting the leaf at right angles to the binding into my wife's sewing machine (which I am not a very bad hand at using myself for such "technical" purposes), stitched it in very neatly with a double seam as far as it would go into the machine, which was within about an inch of the binding, and sewed the remainder by hand, with a large needle and a piece of narrow white ribbon, to the piece of the parchment that still remained close to the binding. On asking the registrar how he thought the excision was to be accounted for, he said that most likely, in times when carelessness was the order of the day, perhaps a century ago, some one had wanted an extract from the register, and the clerk (parish clerks to this day have more to do with parish registers than is perhaps altogether quite desirable) hadn't a piece of paper, or even the clergyman thought it too much trouble to copy out what was wanted, and excision saved that trouble. So much for the care of past days!

Let me next say a few words on the very closely kindred subject of the documents deposited in Diocesan Registries. From the very legitimate use which I have made of them, it is certain that in the diocese in which I am beneficed they have been kept with exemplary care, and that access to them for proper purposes is as easy as can be desired; and the registrar told me that I was by no means the only clergyman who had so used them, as parish registers were constantly brought there for comparison and restoration. Had these documents not been in the place in which they had been kept for three centuries, but transferred to a London office as was once proposed, while the parochial registers were left in their respective parishes, their usefulness, as in the case of the like proposed transfer to London of parish registers, would have been greatly impaired, and probably in many instances altogether destroyed. I certainly could neither have spared the time for, nor have borne the expense of the journey to and stay in London which would have been indispensable, nor (last and by no means least) the enormous office fees which I can only suppose would have been unavoidable, which must have amounted, at 2s. 7d. each, to £25 16s. 8d. for rectifying 200 entries; or to at least £10 at a shilling per search, if they let me off as cheaply as they could do; but which, as it was, cost me nothing. It is said that the documents in some Diocesan Registries are not in the good

order in which I found them in my own diocese. But this is no argument for their removal. On the contrary, the frequent and legitimate use of them in the diocese to which I refer, is in itself a strong appeal to have them carefully arranged, classified, and, if possible, indexed, in every Diocesan Registry throughout England.

Lastly, let me ask on what possible plea of justice can the legislature presume so much to think of this act of confiscation and robbery? The parochial registers have been provided from their commencement at the expense of the respective parishes; in many instances, when the parishes were too poor to bear the expense, at the cost of their incumbents, and are their unquestionable property, as they are with no less certainty by far the most valuable of their possessions. Without them parochial histories would be lost, associations destroyed, and even families disintegrated; in fact it is difficult to foresee the extent of the serious consequences which could not but result from so unprincipled a misappropriation of the only family documents of the poor. Further, it is more than doubtful whether the fees for searches and certificates would suffice to maintain the office to which it has been proposed to transfer them.

A building sufficiently large for the convenient and accessible arrangements for all the parochial and diocesan registers of England, must be of very considerable size; and to render it fireproof would involve a yet heavier outlay than would be required for ordinary office buildings. It must be fire-proof; otherwise, one big fire, and where would they all be? It is true they might almost as well be burned out and out as consigned to a place in which they would be so utterly useless; for it is certain that the number of certificates issued would fall very far below what are now so freely given by the clergy for the benefit of the poor, as application would only be made for them in cases of the most urgent necessity. The loss to the poor, however, and indeed to society, would on that account be none the less serious.

Only one more point need be remarked on. I know of some few-very few-old parishes, the incumbents of which have of late years refused to send copies of the year's register entries to the Diocesan Registry, and of one or two new ones, from which these copies have never been so sent at all. I know that these are days in which I need not urge my clerical brethren as a body to keep their registers, both as regards preservation of the

old and entries in the new volumes, with care and accuracy. But I may urge on those who do not send in the duplicates to revive this most useful practice, of which I myself have, I think, amply proved the practical utility. The actual occasion for a search or extract may arise at any time; and any absence of such demand is beside the question. It is true that the act of 1812 imposes no penalty for not sending in the duplicates year by year, but the very absence of penalty surely but adds to the moral obligation to obey the requirements of the law, and to conform to a wholesome custom which can but give strength and stability to an important national institution. Its importance, however, depends on its present local associations. Let this tie be broken by so preposterous a piece of legislation as that which has been proposed, and the nation will lose its domestic history, the antiquary its genealogical history, and the poor their hereditary right; while "the Parish Register" will only live in annals of the past as an institution once useful, honoured, and loved; now by an act of shameless robbery, disgraced, hidden, and lost.