6 d, for Micklmas Supeles washing and
        lining 1/8, for Ringing for the 11th of October
        5/-, for Ringing for the 30th of October 5/-, for
        half year’s wages Due June ye 24 L 1 12 s. 6. 
        Ringing for the 5th November, for washing the
        Supelis and Lining and Bread at Chrsmus 1/3,
        for Easter Supelis washing and Lining and Bread
        1/8, for Joyle for the Clock and Bells 2/6, for
        Leader for the 4th Bell Clapper 5 d, Ringing for
        the 23rd of April 5/-, for making the Levy 2/-,
        for a hors to Lichfield 11/6, pd John Stack
        going to Dudley 2 times for the Clockman 1/-. 
        For a monthly (?) meeting to Ralph Momford
        Sep. the 15th 2/-, Spent at freeman’s Coming from
        the Visitation-----“[64]

[Footnote 64:  Olden Wednesbury, by F.W.  Hackwood, who kindly sent me this information.]

But we have grievous things to record with regard to the clerks and the registers, not that they were to blame so much as the proper custodians, who neglected their duties and left these precious books in the hands of ignorant clerks to be preserved in poor overcrowded cottages.  But the parish clerks sinned grievously.  One Phillips, clerk of Lambeth parish, ran away with the register book, so Francis Sadler tells us in his curious book, The Exaction and Imposition of Parish Fees Discovered, published in 1738, “whereby the parish became great sufferers; and in such a case no person that is fifty years old, and born in the parish, can have a transcript of the Register to prove themselves heir to an estate.”  Moreover, Master Sadler, who was very severe on parish clerks, tells of the iniquities of the Battersea clerk who used to register boys for girls and girls for boys, and not one-half of the register book, in his time, was correct and authentic, as it ought to be.

What shall be said of the carelessness of an incumbent who allowed the register to be kept by the clerk in his poor cottage?  When a gentleman called to obtain an extract from the book, the clerk produced the valuable tome from a drawer in an old table, where it was reposing with a mass of rubbish.  Another old parchment register was discovered in a cottage in a Northamptonshire parish, some of the pages of which were tacked together as a covering for the tester of a bedstead.  The clerk in another parish followed the calling of a tailor, and found the old register book useful for the purpose of providing himself with measures.  With this object he cut out sixteen leaves of the old book, which he regarded in the light of waste paper.

A gentleman on one occasion visited a church in order to examine the registers of an Essex parish.  He found the record for which he was searching, and asked the clerk to make the extract for him.  Unfortunately this official had no ink or paper at hand with which to copy out the entry, and casually observed: