"
Even so late as 1774 the members of this ancient society were accustomed
to meet annually in the summer time at Stroud Green, and to regale
themselves in the open air, the number of persons assembling on some
occasions producing a scene similar to that of a country wake or fair.
These assemblies had no connection with the Worshipful Company of
Parish Clerks.
CHAPTER XI
THE CLERKS AND THE PARISH REGISTERS
A study of an old parish register reveals a remarkable variation in the
style and character of the handwriting. We see in the old parchment
pages numerous entries recorded in a careless scribble, and others
evidently written by the hand of a learned and careful scholar. The
rector or vicar ever since the days of Henry VIII, when in 1536
Vicar-General Thomas Cromwell ordered the keeping of registers, was
usually supposed to have recorded the entries in the register. Cromwell
derived the notion of ordering the keeping of the registers from his
observation of the records kept by the Spanish priests in the Low
Countries where he resided in his youth. Archbishop Ximenes of Toledo
instituted a system of registration in Spain in 1497, and this was
carried on by the Spanish priests in the Netherlands, and thus laid the
foundation of that system which Thomas Cromwell introduced to this
country and which has continued ever since.
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