Note 1161 — Chapter VIII · RISE OF ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE: THE CHURCH DEVELOPS AND ADMINISTERS MATRIMONIAL LAW

Burn, Hist. of Parish Registers, 1-16. Compare Waters, Parish Registers, 5. Mention is made of registers in France as early as 1308; and by an order of Cardinal Ximenes, 1497, they were to be kept in every parish of the diocese of Toledo "in order to remedy the disorders occasioned by the frequency of divorces in Spain, on the ground of spiritual affinity."—Burn, 3; Marsolier, Histoire du ministère du Cardinal Ximenes, tom. 1, liv. 2, 263; Waters, Parish Registers, 4. Cf. Palgrave, in Quart. Rev., LXXIII, 561, who thus goes too far in saying that "parish registers were never kept in any part of the world until the sixteenth century."

There is some evidence, held to be inconclusive by Burn, op. cit., 5-15, that an order for the use of registers may have been made earlier than 1538. The fact that at least eight registers begin before that date points to instructions given at the time of the suppression of the smaller monasteries: Waters, op. cit., 6. At the time of the insurrection in Yorkshire, 1536, in order to draw the common people, it was given out "that the king designed to get all the gold of England into his hands, under colour of recoining it; that he would seize all unmarked cattle, and all the ornaments of parish churches, and they should be forced to pay for christenings, marriages, and burials (orders having been given for keeping Registers thereof), and for licenses to eat white bread."—Carte, Hist. of England. See also the rare tract by Holmes (1537), and the letter of Sir Piers Edgcumb to Cromwell (April 20, 1539), both quoted by Burn, op. cit., 8, 9. For the date see Waters, op. cit., 7; and compare Burn's Fleet Marriages, 3.