Carole's speculation on the marriage of Hannah COATES and the multiple baptisms struck a chord - There was a similar event on Christmas Day 1826 when a whole raft of THOMPSONs were baptised at the same time. I have a vision of the vicar, breathing fire, rounding up the "little heathens" and forcing them into church for the event! The other theory I have is that they may have been members of another church before that date - perhaps non conformist or Quaker, and they arrive as a job lot of conversions! Certainly there is evidence of Thompson connections to the Hillesley St Methodist Chapel before this time. However - there are stranger stories - as a salutory tale in the history of English BMDs check out the Clutch Club web site below (a Clutch Club was a scheme for Computer Learning and Understanding through Community History - parents needing to reskill applied, did local history research and built web pages of resource for local schools!) Here you will find the story of the Rev "Joey" Guest who discovered someone had boobed big time by not licensing his church for marriages, and so he stood up in the pulpit one Sunday and declared the whole congregation bastards - in the end it took an Act of Parliament to sort it out!!!! Marriages for the preceding 50 years were all affected! http://clutch.open.ac.uk/schools/newbradwell99/page2.html Sort that mess out in your family history records!! :-)) Marilyn