National Registers
Nonconformist Registers
Anglican Church Registers
What do you do if your ancestors were not Anglicans? Don’t panic is the answer. After all, as the 1851 census revealed, much of the country was Nonconformist: around 25 per cent of the population. So there is a good chance you may find that your ancestors were not members of the Church of England and were therefore not included in any parish registers. Nevertheless, it is not worth dismissing parish records if this is the case. Until the early part of the nineteenth century only Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials had a legal status, and to keep within the law many Nonconformists held their baptisms, marriages and burials in Anglican churches. However, a number of Nonconformist groups did keep their own records and registers, many of which were submitted to the government in 1837 once civil registration began. These can be perused at the Public Record Office (PRO) in Kew, London, and the FRC. Click here to view a Baptism and Burial register from 1781.
Roman Catholic Church Registers
Various Protestant groups were the most diligent in keeping records and registers: Quakers and Moravians, for example. Roman Catholicism is a different matter entirely. Few Catholics are of English decent – most are descendants of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants or European Catholics who came to Britain – and in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries those who were, were a persecuted minority. Catholicism was effectively outlawed, and fear of persecution prevented any meaningful registers being kept before the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1837, when Roman Catholic churches were asked to send in their registers, not many complied, and records are still often in the possession of the Church. The society of Genealogists has some Catholic parish records, while details of fines and penalties imposed on people practising Catholicism (called Recusants) can be found at the PRO.