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 attract attention. The view here takes in High Hoyland and its Church on the north horizon, Denby and its Church in the west, and part of Hoyland-Swaine and its Church on the south-west.

The restored Saxon Cross on the South side of the steps, with two pieces of its original shaft and the original Cross on the summit, standing altogether about thirteen feet in height, is a 'blest Sign of man's redemption' which happily connects the present faith of Christ's Church with the Christian past of the Parish eight hundred years ago.

may appropriately follow the account of Church and Churchyard. They go back as far as the year 1653, on the 29th of September in which year a new Act of the Commonwealth Parliament came into operation. At the Dissolution of Monasteries in 1535, the dispersion of Monks, who had up to that period been the principal Register-keepers, gave rise to a mandate issued in 1538 by Thomas Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex, Vicar General, for the Keeping of Registers of Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, in each Parish. Afterwards, in the reign of Elizabeth, it was ordered that every minister at his institution to a benefice should subscribe to this protestation, "I shall keepe the register booke according to the Queen's Majestie's injunction." Parishes are frequently deficient in Registers during the usurpation, the duty of registering being then taken out of the hands of the clergy, and given over to some village tradesman whose chief recommendation for office was probably the zeal he had shown in the destruction of all the ancient registers and records. In 1644, when the ordinance was passed against the use of the Book of Common Prayer in favour of The Directory for Public Worship, a fair Register Book was ordered to be provided. An Act was passed in 1653 "touching marriages and the registering thereof, and also touching births and burials." Before the 22nd of September in that year, each parish was to choose some able and honest person as its registrar, to be approved and sworn by one justice of the peace, and so signified under his hand in the said Register Book, the person so elected continuing in office for three years.