At the opening of the argument, the Court of Exchequer decided that the
fees, &c. are regulated by the 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 86., "An Act for
registering Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England," which in the 35th
section enacts--

"That every rector, vicar, curate, and every registrar, registering
officer, and secretary, who shall have the keeping, for the time being,
of any register book of births, deaths, or marriages, shall at all
reasonable times allow searches to be made of any register book in his
keeping, and shall give a copy, certified under his hand, of any entry
or entries in the same, on payment of the fee hereinafter mentioned;
that is to say, for every search extending over a period not more than
one year, the sum of 1s., and 6d. additional for every additional year;
and the sum of 2s. 6d. for every single certificate."

MR. CHADWICK seemed to consider this section only applied to "civil
registration;" but this view is, I apprehend, now quite untenable.

The case was, whether a parish clerk had a right to charge 2s. 6d., where
the party searching the register did not require "certified copies," but
only made his own extracts; _and it is decided he has no such right_.

Mr. Baron Parke in his judgment says:

"I think this payment was not voluntary, because the defendant" [the
parish clerk] "told the plaintiff, that if he did not pay him for
certificates, in all cases in which he wanted to make extracts, he
should not make a search at all. _I think the plaintiff had at all
events a right to make a search, and during that time make himself
master, as he best might, of the contents of the book, and could not be
prevented from so doing by the clerk_ in whose custody they were; who
in the present case insisted that if he wanted copies he must have
certificates with the signature of the incumbent. For the 1s. he paid,
the applicant had a right to look at all the names in one year. He had
no right to remain an unreasonable time looking at the book; nor
perhaps, strictly speaking, was the parish clerk bound to put it into
his hands at all: for the clerk has a right to superintend everything
done, and might fairly say to a man, 'Your hands are dirty: keep them
in your pockets.' The applicant could therefore only exercise his right
of search during a reasonable time, and make extracts that way. _If a
man insist