Hello Chris, On 15/10/2007, Chris <chris.eintracht@bigpond.com > wrote: > A quick and probably very simple question to answer. I am currently > trawling > through my recently acquired Heathfield microfiche and wondered if someone > > can briefly tell me why a baptism, marriage or burial would appear in the > Parish Register and not the Bishops Transcripts or vice versa; and also > sometimes in both. Because a) BTs are transcripts b) but were often produced by churchwardens who sometimes seemed to know more about parish events, people and names than the parsons c) PRs were also sometimes (if not often) themselves transcripts of notes made at the time by the parson of baptisms, marriages and burials perforned by himself , and d) (although this is no more than a suspicion on my part derived from Bodiam PRs and BTs, but which I also suspect was not an isolated case) because the incumbent would rather not tell the Diocesan Registry the full story of what appears to have been his "trade" in marriages in case he was hauled over the coals (or far worse) by the church courts! The Bodiam PRs and BTs differ noticeably for a short period (10 years) in the late 17th c. particularly in respect of marriages. Whereas the PRs almost always give details of parish of origin the BTs are generally deficient in those details, except for two years. The brides and grooms came from many different parishes in east Sussex and mid-Kent . Both PRs and BTs were signed off by the vicar and appear to be in the same hand. One good reason that I have found for using BTs, whatever the rights and wrongs of both forms, is that they are often more legible than the PRs either through better preservation or through greater care taken and better handwriting, I always try to see both and make my own mind up on which to use or whether simply to show notes of the differences Jim Halsey