This
discovery led to further investigation, which brought to light a
practice of the Parish Clerk and Schoolmaster of the day, who to
certain 'goodies' of the village, gave the parchment leaves for
hutkins for their knitting pins."
Still greater desecration has taken place. The registers of South
Otterington, containing several entries of the great families of
Talbot, Herbert, and Falconer, were kept in the cottage of the parish
clerk, who used all those preceding the eighteenth century for waste
paper, and devoted not a few to the utilitarian employment of singeing
a goose. At Appledore the books were lost through having been kept in
a public-house for the delectation of its frequenters.
But many parsons have kept their registers with consummate care. The
name of the Rev. John Yate, rector of Rodmarton, Gloucestershire, in
1630, should be mentioned as a worthy and careful custodian on account
of his quaint directions for the preservation of his registers. He
wrote in the volume:--
"If you will have this Book last, bee sure to aire it att the
fier or in the Sunne three or foure times a yeare--els it will
grow dankish and rott, therefore look to it. It will not be
amisse when you finde it dankish to wipe over the leaves with a
dry woollen cloth.
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