Excerpt from Parish Registers in England, Their History and Contents: With Suggestions for Securing Their Better Custody and PreservationThe want has long been felt of a handy and in expensive manual of the law and practice of registra tion, which could be consulted with confidence and read with amusement by those, who have parish registers In their charge and take an intelligent interest in their history and contents.' The only book on the subject is that of the late Mr. R. S. Burn, who was employed by the Government in the preparation of the Civil Registration Bill of 1837, and was a member of both the Royal Commissions, which were subsequently appointed for the purpose of collecting and authenti cating non-parochial registers. It would be ungracious to dwell on the defects of so diligent a labourer in a newly explored field of learning, but Mr. Burn was more successful in collecting facts than in marshalling and digesting his collections, and his History of Parish Registers is disfigured by frequent inaccuracy of quota tion, and by a want of power to grasp his subject, which makes it difficult for his readers to form a clear connected view of the different stages through which the question of registration has passed.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.