Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/119

 9* S. IV. Sept. 9,«.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 211 ham: "1691, Dec. 12th. Thomas Gordon, Gentleman, and Anne Rawlins, Widow of Edward Rawlins, Granddaughter of the late Lord Viscount Stafford." The transcript from "Worcester showed that this entry had been subsequently inserted in the parish register. In the case of King and White v. Farran, tried at Chelmsford in 1829, the plaintiffs Ereduced a certificate from the register of inton as evidence of the baptism of Ann King, and obtained a verdict. On a new trial it was proved by the transcript that the entry in the parish register was a forgery, and the defendant preserved her family estates. The delinquent immediately left the kingdom. In the case of Lloyd and Passingham in 1809, Lord Eldon referred to a forgery in the register of St. Pancras. No transcript had been returned to the bishop's registry, and the consequence was a succession of suits at law, to the grievous injury of the parties whose estates were attempted to be taken from them. In July, 1829, two strangers applied to see the registers of St. Peter's, Cornhill, where they inserted the marriage of Osmond Mor- daunt and Mary Bulger on 16 June, 1673. In this case there was no transcript of the register to assist in the detection of the In the case of Oldham and Eborall, tried in the Court of Chancery in 1829, it was proved that the record of a certain marriage in 1712 was not to be found in the registry of Birmingham, but it was found in the tran- script sent to the bishop at Lichfield in 1713. The original register and the transcript were compared, when it was discovered that three entries in the former had been obliterated by some liquid. The case of Ansdell v. Gorapertz was to £ trove the legitimacy of two brothers named saac, involving the title to nearly 100,000^. in the Court of Chancery. It was tried before Mr. Baron Gurney, at Exeter, in March, 1837, when the jury found for the defendants. When the case came before the Chancellor again he characterized it as opening a scene of the most wicked conspiracy, perjury, forgery, and fraud which it had ever been his mis- fortune to witness in that court. In the Fendall case, in 1839, a committee was appointed to inquire into the "extra- ordinary mutilation of inscriptions on tomb- stones and interpolations in the parish register of Marylebone." The report states that the attention of the committee was particularly drawn to various alterations and erasures not only in the registers of marriages, baptisms, and burials, but also in the " minister s fee-book." In 1839 an attempt was made to establish a claim to the dignity of a baronet. Upon examination of the registers of St. Mary's, Nottingham, it was found that the entry of the marriage of certain persons had been altered, as also the baptisms of two of their children, which were proved by the bishop's transcripts at York, where the entries were found in their original and authentic form. On 21 Jan., 1840, Henry Fowler and Susannah Jordan were charged at Bow Street with forging and altering the parish registers of East Mailing, in Kent; and it was stated that property to the amount of 6,000/. a year was involved in the inquiry. It appears that the first word in an entry of baptism of James Fowler in 1688. and the whole of a marriage entry in 1726, May the 21st, married George Fowler to Hannah Bassett," were forged. On 12 Feb. the male prisoner was committed to take his trial at the next Central Criminal Court for the forgery. In the registers of the parish church of St. Wilfrid, Mobberley, Cheshire, a christening is said to have taken place on 29 Feb., 1582, and another on the same date in 1671, while two burials took place on 29 Feb., 1639 and 1659, respectively, neither of the four years being leap-year. Another christening is said to have taken place on 30 Feb., 1585. From these examples it must be evident that too much reliance should not be placed on the entries in church .registers. Eveeard Home Coleman. 71, Brecknock Road. A similar omission of an entry from a register was likely to be of serious con- sequence in my own family. A lady was buried, last century, at St. John's, on the Cornish bank of the Tamar. As the burial was not registered the rector could not certify. At length a witness said that he himself had paid the extra fee for burial in linen. The rector at once remembered, because it was the first or only such fee he had ever received in the parish. Dining out and being late, he deferred the entry and had forgotten it. His diary confirmed the date, and he wrote a certificate. When searching the registersof St. Budeaux, on the Devonshire bank of the Tamar, where Sir Francis Drake married his first wife, Mary Newman, I found the burial of John Joll (als. Jollifie) registered 1 Jan., 1783, aged eighty-eight. His baptism at Trewen, 21 April, 1685, proved that he was aged ninety-eight. Probably the similarity in sound of " itey ite "