Licence: In copyright
Credit: The parish registers of England / J. Charles Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![1728 (Uxbridge, Middlesex). N.B. On July 7, Unity Winch did penance at morning service for May 26. [On the 26 of May is an entry of the baptism of the illegitimate child of Unity Winch.] 1740 (North Aston, Oxon). Memorandum that Mr. Cooper sent in a form of penance by Mr. Wakefield, of Deddington, that Catherine King should do penance in ye Parish Church of North Ashton, ye sixth day of March, and accordingly she did. Witness, William Vaughan, Vicar. Charles May, John Baillis, Churchwardens. r785 (Caundle Bishop, Dorset). On Sunday, the 23 day of October, Susannah Philips, who lives near Colonel Bridge in this parish of Bishop's Caundle, did Penance in this Church, by standing during the whole time of Divine Service near the Reading Desk, in a white Linen Sheet, and immediately after the Second Lesson repeating words after the Minister to the following effect. ... [The words are not given; the baptismal register records the baptism on 21st March 1788, of Job, bastard son of Susana Philips.] As to nineteenth-century instances of white-sheet pen- ance up to about 1850, see Vaux's Church Folk-lore (1899), pp. 173-8. The inscription on the font of Tollesbury, Essex, affords remarkable evidence of the heavy fine of £^ paid by way of penance to avoid prosecution in the ecclesiastical courts. The small octagonal font of this church bears round the margin of the bowl, in very distinct lettering, what is surely the quaintest font inscription in all Christendom :— Good people all I pray take care, That in ye church you do not swear, As this man did. An entry under the baptisms in the parish register explains this strange distich:— 1718, August 30th. Elizabeth, daughter of Robert and Eliza Wood, being ye first childe whom was baptized in the New Font](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21352422_0266.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
