Hi, Alan, You wrote > You will probably not find baptisms or any ceremony from a Catholic church for the years mentioned as until the Emancipation Act 1829, except for Jews and Quakers all marriages etc were illegal except if performed and registered in an Anglican church. If you are interested in Catholic Registers, there is a series of six books that detail all the known registers of early Catholic Mission. According to the volume "Catholic Missions and Registers 1700 - 1880, Volume 5, North West England" compiled and published by M. Gandy, 2nd Edition, 1998 (ISBN 0 9528879 2 4) the Catholic mission in Preston was in existence in 1605. It was known as St. Mary and its baptism registers start in 1768, with the marriages register starting in 1769. Catholic chapels were permitted, provided they were registered with the Quarter Sessions from 1791. Catholic priests could minister to their flock and Catholic could establish schools from this date. The position with regard to marriages is that before 1750 the whole marriage legislation was a shambles and in 1754 Hardwicke's Act came into power. This required that a marriage had to be performed by an appropriate Anglican minister in an approved Anglican church. As you say, these conditions did not apply to Jews or Quakers for a variety of reasons. They did apply to ALL non-conformists - in 1754 these were mainly Papists (Catholics) and Independents (Protestant dissenters). The late 1700s were the start of the Industrial Revolution. The population was growing rapidly and so the numbers of non-conformists was increasing. Further there was a growing awareness by some Anglican ministers that the Church of England was not reaching the new industrial areas. The wesley brothers were prominent in this movement and after their death we see the formation of the Methodist church. It was the fact that the Anglican church was not reaching a large part of the population, and that many of the non-conformist communities were not using the Anglican services that made the government want a better method of assessing the size of the population remoteness. This resulted in the establishment of civil registration. Preston had a significant non-conformist population of all kinds, from Quakers to Papists. Many or the pre-1837 non-conformist registers were sent to the Registration Commissioners in 1838, for "authorisation". Many chapels that submitted their registers were under the impression that they would be returned after "authorisation", but that did not happen. These registers eventually reached the National Archives, and so have been included in the IGI. The only RC registers to be submitted from Lancashire were those of St. Alban in Blackburn. Hope this clarifies the situation, but if anything is not clear, send me a note and I will have a re-think. Jim Lancaster (Bury, Lancs.) ----- Original Message ----- From: "alan potter" <goodhopes@bigpond.com> To: <ENG-LANCS-PRESTON-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 9:18 PM Subject: FW: Catholic Churches