Early Registers

Get to grips with the earliest registers introduced following the establishment of the Church of England in 1534

Registers predating the mid-18th century are often faded; many letters look different; words are decorated with squiggles, and lines denoting abbreviations; and spellings are not standardised. The register may even be in Latin. However, the text can still be unpicked, if you make the most of online resources. TNA has a tutorial on old handwriting at nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography; there are notes on the Latin of parish registers at www.genuki.org.uk/big/LatinNotes; and you can find a free Latin-to-English translator at en.eprevodilac.com/prevodilac-latinski-engleski.

1 Latin Text

This register on ancestry. co.uk for the parish of Alderton is mostly in Latin and the pages here list the baptisms, marriages and burials that took place between 1611 and 1616 in chronological order.

2 Julian Calendar

The cleric notes the start of each New Year on 25 March (Lady Day). The Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1752, when the New Year moved to 1 January.

3 Marriage Records

In 1905 the marriages appearing on this page were extracted, transcribed and published as Phillimore’s Parish Register Series (Wiltshire, Volume I). A copy of this can be read more easily on the UK Genealogy Archives website at ukga.org/ Registers/wiltshire.html.

4 Latin Names

Some names are in Latin, such as Gulielmus (‘William’) and Eduardus (‘Edward’).

5 Terminology

Common words and phrases include anno p’dicto (‘in the current year’), die (‘day’), baptizat (‘baptised’), filius and filia (‘son’ and ‘daughter’), matrimoniu (‘married’), sepulta (‘buried’), solemnizat (‘solemnised’) and vidua (‘widow’).