The accounts of the churchwardens, 1525-1603 / transcribed and edited by John V. Kitto.

  • Kitto, John V.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The accounts of the churchwardens, 1525-1603 / transcribed and edited by John V. Kitto. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    PREFACE. “TlS hard, methinks, that a man cannot publish a book but he must “ presently give the world a reason for’t, when yet there’s not one book of “twenty that will bear a reason, not one man of a hundred, perhaps, that “is able to give one, nor one reason of a thousand (when they are given) “that was the reason of doing it.” {Translation of Cicero's Letters, Robert L’Estrange, 1680.) Whether this book be or be not that one of twenty, or this writer that one of a hundred, here is the one reason of a thousand which has the merit of truth. The book seems worth publishing and therefore it is published. For my share of it—let me say I was not importuned but importunate, that the book is meant well, and I hope that, being weighed in the balance, it will not be found wholly wanting. This volume contains the Churchwardens’ Accounts of St. Martin-in-the- Fields from June, 1525, to Christmas, 1603. These Accounts are contained in thirty-eight books, which have been bound together in one large volume ; they are here reproduced verbatim and page for page. In the majority of cases a year’s accounts are preceded by a list of burials; these are of the greater value, since the extant Registers do not begin until ISS^- Until that date these lists are the only hunting-ground our parish records offer to the genealogist, and after that time they will be found, by those who are curious to search, to give names not in the registers, and to supply interesting enough details about several persons whose names appear in both sets of records. After 1550 I have made a point of indicating those names which occur In this book only, and I have used the Registers for filling up some of the blanks in the Churchwardens’ lists; such additions are given in [brackets], while the footnotes distinguished by {Ri) give variant forms of names from the same source. A volume of this nature is bound to contain many repetitions ; from personal experience I am sure that these are less exasperating than a suspicion that something of interest or value has been edited away. In documents prepared by professional scriveners there are, naturally, not many difficulties of transcription ; for reasons of economy the marks of contraction and abbreviation have been uniformly represented by an