Clockman 1/-.
For a monthly (?) meeting to Ralph Momford
Sep. the 15th 2/-, Spent at freeman's Coming from
the Visitation-----"[64]

[Footnote 64: _Olden Wednesbury_, by F.W. Hackwood, who kindly sent me
this information.]

But we have grievous things to record with regard to the clerks and the
registers, not that they were to blame so much as the proper custodians,
who neglected their duties and left these precious books in the hands of
ignorant clerks to be preserved in poor overcrowded cottages. But the
parish clerks sinned grievously. One Phillips, clerk of Lambeth parish,
ran away with the register book, so Francis Sadler tells us in his
curious book, _The Exaction and Imposition of Parish Fees Discovered_,
published in 1738, "whereby the parish became great sufferers; and in
such a case no person that is fifty years old, and born in the parish,
can have a transcript of the Register to prove themselves heir to an
estate." Moreover, Master Sadler, who was very severe on parish clerks,
tells of the iniquities of the Battersea clerk who used to register boys
for girls and girls for boys, and not one-half of the register book, in
his time, was correct and authentic, as it ought to be.

What shall be said of the carelessness of an incumbent who allowed the
register to be kept by the clerk in his poor cottage? When a gentleman
called to obtain an extract from the book, the clerk produced the
valuable tome from a drawer in an old table, where it was reposing with
a mass of rubbish. Another old parchment register was discovered in a
cottage in a Northamptonshire parish, some of the pages of which were
tacked together as a covering for the tester of a bedstead. The clerk in
another parish followed the calling of a tailor, and found the old
register book useful for the purpose of providing himself with measures.
With this object he cut out sixteen leaves of the old book, which he
regarded in the light of waste paper.

A gentleman on one occasion visited a church in order to examine the
registers of an Essex parish. He found the record for which he was
searching, and asked the clerk to make the extract for him.
Unfortunately this official had no ink or paper at hand with which to
copy out the entry, and casually observed:

"Oh, you may as well have the leaf as it is," and without any hesitation
took out his pocket-knife, cut out the leaf and gave the gentleman the
two entire pages[65].

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