Estimates of population. The parish Register of baptisms and burials affords almost the only means we have of estimating the population of the place in the sixteenth century, and an estimate formed on this basis must necessarily be a very general one. Even if the lists are approximately correct, the baptisms cannot be taken to represent all the births, and the rate of mortality at the time can only be conjectured. So that the most that can be said with any confidence is that the population from 1538 to 1552 was probably about 1000: that in the ten years ended 1600 it appears to have been 1400 or 1500: and that by 1636 it had risen to something like 2000. But these last-mentioned figures are inconsistent with a return made at a bishop's visitation in 1605 by the then vicar, that there were 1000 communicants in the parish.
As bearing upon the population at the date last mentioned, it may be remarked that in an interesting contemporary MS. preserved in the church at Chesham, and further adverted to on page xi., 347 parishioners are named as sufficiently substantial to be specially rated to meet the cost of certain repairs and alterations in the church in the year 1606.
Anyhow, though the known facts are not sufficient to enable us to form any definite estimates of the population, it has evidently been large, for a mere market-town, from very early times; and the lists of the local baptisms, marriages and burials, for the period beginning 1538 and ending 1812, fill as many as eleven folio volumes, some of which are closely written.
Registration at Chesham dates from 1538. Registration was begun at Chesham on October 10th, 1538; and the first volume of the Register contains the records down to the end of the year 1636, with one baptismal entry dated 1641.
Description of the first volume of Register. The book is in a very good state of preservation, but it has been rebound. It contains 136 parchment leaves, size 11¾ by 7⅞ in., closely written on both sides. The number of baptisms recorded is 4415; that of marriages, 1100; that of burials, 3013: total number of entries, 8528. The first part of the book contains the baptisms to the end of 1633; then come the marriages, and, after them, the burials; followed by the baptisms for the last three years of the period, 1634-1636, for which room in their proper place, before the marriages, seems not to have been left when the space was at first apportioned among the three classes of entries. Chronological order obtains throughout. The arrangement is in contrast with that of many registers, in which the baptisms, marriages and burials, sometimes of periods far apart, are mixed up together in a way that is very perplexing to a searcher.
The earliest registers were commonly kept in Latin, but in the book under notice that language is used only in a prefatory note and in a few words here and there.
Entries to 1598 not original. The records from 1538 to 1598 were copied from the original Register, in accordance with the enactment of 1597, already mentioned, which required transcripts to be made on parchment. The transcription seems for the most part to have been carefully done.
Writers and handwriting.
The handwriting in this part of the book, and of the subsequent entries to the end of 1604, is that of William Saunders, vicar from 1572 to 1607. The style is particularly clear, neat and scholarly, so much so that on many pages it might serve as a good model of what we may suppose