letter and stamps may be lost travelling after him, and in any case will only give him and yourself useless trouble.

Should you want a general search made for any of your name, it will be as well to offer a certain fee, and not to leave matters uncertain.

Some clergymen, if good natured, and with a small parish, will often look through their registers, on the understanding that you will take and pay for official copies of all entries they find relating to the name you wish searched for.

If the clergyman is a member of the same archæological society as yourself, you should mention the fact in your letter, in which case, if the search is not purely a business one, he will of course not make any charge.

You should remember that if the person to be searched for gained a scholarship at a great public school, or has been at Oxford or Cambridge, a certificate of his baptism will often be found among the college records. Similarly, if there was a policy on his life, a certificate is often lodged, to prove his age, at the office; but whether kept beyond a certain time I do not know. Still, I once found this useful in a pedigree case.

The non-parochial registers, i.e., those kept by the various Dissenters, including Quakers, are now preserved in the General Register Office, Somerset House,' under two commissions in 1836 and 1857.

They are not of course indexed; but catalogues of them were published in 1841, 1858, and 1859. They include French, Walloon, German, Dutch, and Swiss church registers. Antiquaries and others are apt to overlook the importance of these, forgetting the period to which they sometimes go back.

Among other private registers was one of great importance, known as the register, formerly kept at Dr. Williams' Library, Red Cross Street, but now at the General Register Office, Somerset House. A catalogue of the library was printed in 8vo. in 1841, which contains entries of all denominations of Dissenters from all parts of England, beginning 1715.

The baptismal entries give the names of the mother's father and 1 As to these see Appendix.

mother, and are very voluminous and valuable, being well indexed.

Entries of the marriages of Roman Catholics and Dissenters are often to be found in the parish registers, for until 1806 no marriage was legal, whatever the denominations of the persons married, unless it took place in the parish church-a rule removed by the Marriage Act, 6 and 7 William IV., cap. 85.

Should the parish registers and dissenting registers not contain the entries wanted, the searcher should remember that there were such unauthorized marriage registers as those of Gretna Green and the Fleet.1

2

In 1836 the General Register Office was instituted for England, and from the 1st July, 1837, all births, marriages, and deaths are recorded in quarterly volumes, with perfect lexicographical indexes, which are kept at Somerset House, and which can be consulted on payment of 18. This allows the searcher to look at three entries, but not to take notes. A "general" search costs £1. 18., but the authorities do not seem very clear what a 'general search" means, and I apprehend that it would not authorize the taking of notes of all entries relating to any one surname which occurs in the indexes. For a list of the various non-parochial and other registers see Appendix II., p. 146.

Of late years the quarterly indexes have been printed, which vastly facilitates searches. Why duplicate copies of these printed indexes are not placed in the Record Office, the British Museum, the Law Institution, and most other large libraries, it is hard to say. They would greatly ease the work of the office, and allow much to be done by correspondence, thus saving searchers who want official copies of certificates from having to wait while they are being copied.

1 As to these consult Burn's "Fleet Registers," 8vo., 1833. For some entries from the register of Duke Street Chapel, Westminster (from 1709), the Rolls Chapel, St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row, and Wheeler Chapel, see Coll. Top. et Gen. iii. p. 381; and Gray's Inn and Knightsbridge Chapels, Id., vol. iv. pp. 157 and 162.

2 It is to the credit of the Heralds' College that in 1747 they tried to establish a “general register" of births (Burn, p. 77), but it soon died out for want of publicity.

2

The Scotch Registry does not begin till 1854,' and the Irish till 1864. Indeed, Mr. Chester Waters points out (p. 9) that "until 1st January, 1864, the births and deaths of the entire population of Ireland, and the marriages of the Catholic majority, were suffered to remain wholly unregistered." course he means by Government, for the parochial clergy, Catholic and Protestant alike, did as a rule keep registers, but not well. The earlier registers of the late Established Church of Ireland are in the P. R. O. Dublin. The lacunæ, owing to wanton destruction by neglect, fire, &c., are however very great. The pig-headed obstinacy of the authorities of the Bank of England will not be satisfied with death certificates, and still renders it necessary, in many cases, to supply burial certificates, especially when one has to "make a man dead" in respect of Government Stock. It seems beyond the mental capacity of those who manage the transfer office here to understand that if a man's death is well and truly proved it must be a matter of indifference where and when he was buried, or indeed whether he was buried at all. I very much doubt the bank's right to insist on a burial certificate if sufficient proof is tendered them of the death, and the rule often causes great hardship, for a family may often know when and where a trustee died, but after the interval of years be quite unable to find out where he was buried.

This, too, is not all, for the person making the declaration identifying the certificate often had to swear that he personally examined the certificate with the entry in the burial register. Not long ago I, unluckily, had to make one, and to qualify myself for the declaration wasted about six hours looking up the registers of cemeteries at Lee.

1 The Scotch Parish Registers begin 1550, but were very badly kept, and many are missing.

2 Since the above was in type these bad old rules have both been abolished.

3 The bank's "right" to make a man coming with a bank note and asking for gold put his name and address on its back, was insisted on for years, till, as the story goes, the cashier happened to tell a solicitor, even more brusquely and rudely than usual, to endorse the note. That individual walked out without a word, and at once successfully sued the bank on its dishonored promissory note. I hope this tale is true, if not it is ben trovato anyway.

G

At Appendix III., p. 148, I have given a list of the chief Metropolitan Cemeteries with their addresses.

What the parish and other registers often fail to show may sometimes be gathered from the Monumental Inscriptions;1 and for the higher grades of society, in earlier times, from the "Funeral Certificates," preserved at the Heralds' College, of which samples will be found in the Lancashire Funeral Certificates by King and Canon Raines, Chetham Society, 1869.

CHAPTER X.

Fiscal Records, the Subsidy Rolls, &c.

2

PROBABLY no class of records is more valuable, both to the genealogist and to the topographer, than the Subsidy Rolls; which are records of the Court of Exchequer.

To the former, they not only often prove of great use, as containing the only record of the existence of persons not of knightly or gentle rank; 3 but help, by giving the locality where they lived, to give some clue as to what part of the country they sprang from.

To the topographer they are of the greatest interest, as shewing the relative importance of different places at different times, and often affording an insight as to what were the trades and occupations of its inhabitants.

Again, to the student of surnames, the immense number of lists of names so conveniently preserved in columns for search and noting are most valuable.

Of the clerical subsidies, which are in another series, and

1 Printed inscriptions there are in legions, as mentioned at p. 7. A collected index to them is much wanted.

2 Sims, p. 45, falls into a strange error in saying they contain the supplies to the King from his tenants in capite.

3 For them, see the Knights' fees, &c., p. 31.

which are calendared separately, I have spoken elsewhere, and will now say a few words as to the "Lay Subsidies."

These have been very carefully calendared, and the bound "descriptive" slips forming the calendar are divided into counties, and are to be found in the Round Room at the Record Office.1

These calendars also give the Hundreds to which each document refers.

Calendars of the Rolls are to be found in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Reports, and a detailed list of the Exchequer Series in the 20th Report, p. 138.

Some rolls begin as early as the reign of Henry III., but most counties have none before about the middle of the reign of Edward I.

There is generally a fine roll about 1 Edward III.; that for Norfolk, though imperfect still, contains seventy-two long skins written on both sides in double columns, and giving the names of certainly 37,000 persons, with the sums at which they were rated, arranged under the villages and towns where they resided.

The return for the Poll Tax of 2 Richard II. (1379) is also usually perfect. That for the West Riding of York was published in 1882 by the Yorkshire Archæological and Topographical Association (Bradbury and Co.), and cannot contain fewer than 25,000 names. Unluckily, the Association did not think it worth while to print an index, so its value is minimized, at all events for genealogical collectors.

Very few Subsidy Rolls have been printed, and the only complete series for any Hundred is, I think, that printed by me in my Rough Notes for a History of North Erpingham," part ii. which has all the Norfolk Rolls from 1 Edward III. to 24 Charles II. Sir Thos. Phillipps lithographed the Subsidy Roll for Wilts for 7 Edward II., which now sells for 148.

1 Very many of these Rolls only contain the names of the collectors and particulars of the amounts received, and it is very aggravating to have these commonly valueless documents brought down after a long wait. There is nothing to shew this in the calendar, but a shrewd guess can often be given by noticing the number of membranes given in the calendar. If there are only one or two, or if the roll is headed "Particule Compoti," the document should not, as a rule, be written for, as no names will be given.