So Suckling, the historian of Suffolk, reported. Alas! these have
nearly all disappeared. Scarcely anything remains of the earliest volume
of the register which concludes with the end of the seventeenth century,
and the old deeds have gone also. How could this terrible loss have
occurred? It appears that a parish clerk, "in showing this fine old
church to visitors, presented those curious in old papers and autographs
with a leaf from the register, or some other document, as a memento of
their visit[66]."
[Footnote 66: _Social Life as told by Parish Registers_; also
_Standard_, 8 Jan., 1880.]
Another clerk was extremely popular with the old ladies of the village,
and used to cut out the parchment leaves of the registers and present
them to his old lady friends for wrapping their knitting pins. He was
also the village schoolmaster, as many of his predecessors had been, but
this wretch used to cover the backs of his pupil's lesson-books with
leaves of parchment taken from the parish chest. Another clerk found the
leaves of the registers very useful for "singeing a goose."
The value of old registers for proving titles to estates and other
property is of course inestimable. Sometimes incomes of thousands of
pounds depend upon a little entry in one of these old books, and it is
terrible to think of the jeopardy in which they stand when they rest in
the custody of a careless clerk or apathetic vicar.
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