The parish registers of Richmond, Surrey. Volume 1 / edited by J. Challenor C. Smith.

Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The parish registers of Richmond, Surrey. Volume 1 / edited by J. Challenor C. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/384 (page 6)
    Richmond. Mr. Camidge the Minister shewed me the books, but he says there are omissions and chasms in the years 1750 and 1751, one of which is certainly the year.* Mr. Comer was the Minister at that time.... and I have often heard my mother say how extremely intoxicated he used to be in evenings—not able to walk home.^^t Tt was, however, a conscientious minister of later date who at length brought the disgraceful neglect of the parish clerks to an end. In 1783 the Rev. Thomas Wakefield, who then held the Cure, made this note in the book :— [“N.B.—This Register, in the registering by Clem* Smith the Vestry Clerk, has been found in many instances and various respects to be exceedingly incorrect, owing, as there was much reason to suppose, to his having registered the whole at one time from Memorandum-books and even loose papers, which he was at length constrained to copy in consequence of Thomas Wakefield the Minister requiring all the parish Registers to be delivered into his own care in the year 1783.—^T. W.”] Even then, Clement Smith before-named did not divulge that he had in his possession the volumes covering 1583— 1682, so when Lysons was compiling his account of Richmond for the Environs,Mr. Wakefield told him that there was no register of previous date to 1682, and that there was consequently no extant entry of Stella^s ” baptism. In December 1796 a son of the above-named Clement Smith delivered the earlier registers into Mr. Wakefield^s hands, and Lysons was then able to publish the Stella entry among some Addenda.^’ In spite of so much that has contributed to its imperfec- tion, the Richmond Register is one of unusual value and of far more than local interest. The palace was more or less in occupation by Royalty until almost the end of the reign of Charles I., for which reason a large number of entries in the * All record of the marriages between June 13, 17SI) and May ii, 1754, is lost. t Mr. Comers M.I. in Kingston Church hints at some imperfection of character—a very unusual circumstance.