Parish Register epic fail

[kiterunner]

Looking at the first page of the St Mary, Staines parish register I was astonished to see that it was supposedly dated 1529! In beautiful handwriting it says "In the yeare of our Lord god one thousand five hundred and XXIXth and in the XXXIth yeare of our soverainge lord Kinge Henery the VIIJ". Someone has written 1529 above this, presumably at a much later date and just converted from the XXIX.

On the next page we have Anno Domini 1530 going up to June XXI and then another heading Anno Domini 1540, starting at June XXVIIJ.

The regnal date on page 1 must be right and the other date wrong. I guess somebody finally told him what decade it was and he didn't want to spoil the look of page 2 with a crossing out? But surely he could have added an extra X on page 1.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...hsrc=UMN174196

[Phoenix]

You are almost certainly right, although some parish registers do start before they were obligatory and there is an amazing potential monster project at the Vatican, transcribing the pre Reformation parish books that priests took with them to Rome and attempting to allocate them to parishes.

It is clear that the anonymous Elizabethan transcriber had an equally challenging project on his hands with sheets missing or possibly illegible (or an incompetent vicar!) as some years having no entries, despite this obviously being a populous parish.

What is fascinating, is instances where the original entries and the transcripts both survive. Faced with decades worth of entries, the transcribers omitted all but the minimum of detail.

[Olde Crone]

I have seen one very early register - from memory 1531 - but it had been folded mapwise and the photographer (LDS) had just gone across it, presumably having given up any attempt at chronological order. It was worse than useless, frankly, because there were no page headings and no year headings. Such a shame and I wished I could print it all off, cut it out and put it together like a jigsaw.

OC