3-057-476 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Parish register, late 16th century. The first entries for burials in 1539, 1540, and 1541 from the register of St Peter's church in Dunwich, the Suffolk town which has been swallowed up by the sea. The register was rescued from the church shortly before it finally fell into the sea in 1697; its pages have been stained by water. In 1538, Thomas Cromwell ordered that churches should enter in a book details of every baptism, marriage and burial, thus initiating parish registers - one of the most important series of local records. Hardly any original registers of this period survive; most early parish registers are, like this example, late 16th-century transcripts made in response to an order that existing registers, which were mostly on paper, should be copied into more durable parchment books.