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England and Wales. The implications of thisstatement for family historians are immense as itmeans that a significant proportion of ourancestors were not members of the establishedchurch and therefore that the details of theirbirths and deaths are unlikely to be recorded inthe ‘official’ records maintained by the Churchof England.

From the late 17th century onwards, protestantdenominations began to keep records of thebirths/baptisms and deaths/burials of members oftheir own religious communities. These registershad no legal status but they were, in many cases,more detailed than their Anglican equivalents.

Non-Parochial RegistersCommission As part of the establishment of the GeneralRegister Office in 1837, a ‘Non-Parochial RegistersCommission’ was set up. One of the first tasks ofthe Commission was to send a circular to theexisting nonconformist churches, chapels andmeeting houses asking them to submit theirregisters for authentication. By 1840, almost 4,000volumes had been authenticated and depositedwith the GRO. Certified extracts that could beused as evidence in a Court of Law could now beissued from the registers. For the first time, therecords of the country’s nonconformistcongregations had the same legal standing as theChurch of England’s parish registers.

This vast collection of registers eventuallyfound its way into the Public Record Office,along with the other records created or inheritedby the General Register Office. The records arenow held by The National Archives in recordseries RG 4.

The standard of record keeping is generallygood but the amount of detail recorded in theregisters varies greatly. As a rule, you wouldexpect to find as much information as theequivalent Church of England registers wouldrecord and in many cases much more. It is notuncommon for dates of birth as well as baptismto be recorded and mothers’ maiden namesfrequently appear.

There are very few marriages recorded after1753. Hardwicke’s Marriage Act required thatmarriages had to take place in a parish church sononconformists were forced to marry within theChurch of England in order to ensure that theirmarriages were legally valid and that theirchildren were legitimate.

Not all nonconformist congregations werewilling to surrender their registers to the 1837Commission so in 1857 an attempt was made togather in those registers that had been missedearlier. The second Non-Parochial RegistersCommission collected a further 300 or so registersand these are now held in record series RG 8.

Unfortunately, even after two quite thoroughattempts at collecting non-parochial registers,

many remained in the hands of the congregations.Roman Catholics in particular were, perhapsunderstandably considering the long history oftheir persecution, somewhat reluctant to part withtheir registers. It’s also worth noting that RomanCatholic registers were used not just as records ofpast events but as proof, for example, that a personwanting to get married in the Catholic faith wasalso baptized a Catholic. So there was good reasonfor the Roman Catholic churches to want to holdon to their registers. As a result, there are fewerthan 200 Roman Catholic registers amongst therecords held by The National Archives.

The vast majority of the registers are from thefour major protestant nonconformistcongregations: Presbyterians, Independents (alsoknown as Congregationalists), Baptists andWesleyan Methodists. But a whole host of smallergroups are also represented in the recordsincluding Unitarians, Moravians, Inghamites, BibleChristians, Swedenborgians and the wonderfullynamed Muggletonians.

The earliest entries in these registers date fromthe period of the English Civil War. The registers ofthe Presbyterian Chapel at Hindley near Wigan inLancashire commence in 1642, while the register ofthe Bull Lane Independent Chapel in Stepney, EastLondon opens with the baptism of ‘John the son ofCaptain John Robinson of Shorditch’ who wasbaptized on the ‘15th Day of the 10th month 1644’.

The history of nonconformity in Englandand Wales is long and complex. Strictlyspeaking, a nonconformist can be definedas anyone whose religious beliefs do not

conform with those of the official established statechurch – which, in this country, since the time ofKing Henry VIII, has been the Church of England.

In the family history world, the term‘nonconformist’ is usually understood to refer to

members of one of the many dissenting protestantnonconformist communities that sprang up in the17th century. Religious toleration is a relativelymodern concept and, after the restoration of themonarchy in 1660, a number of Acts of Parliamentwere passed that attempted to suppress religiousdissent by criminalizing and/or marginalizing theactivities of those who practised it. But the statewas always fighting a losing battle and in 1689 theAct of Toleration was passed, which gave basicfreedom of worship to protestant nonconformists,and this was followed much later by the CatholicEmancipation Act of 1829, which did the same forRoman Catholics.

By the start of the 19th century, nonconformistsmade up almost a quarter of the population of

BEGINNER’S GUIDE... Nonconformists

Details of their births anddeaths are unlikely to berecorded in ‘official’ records

RegistersDave Annal explains how to track down yournonconformist ancestors using the vast array ofnon-parochial registers

THE BULL LANEIndependentChapel’s registeropens with thebaptism of CaptainJohn Robinson’sson in 1644. The Genealogist /BMDRegisters / TNA, RG4/4414

GEORGE WHITEFIELD PREACHING byJohn Collet (c1725–1780)Private Collection/ The Bridgeman Art Library

But these are the exceptions rather than the rule.Many registers don’t start until the late 18th centuryand some run for just a few years up to 1837.

Along with the registers of individualcongregations, the records in RG 4 and RG 8include the registers of a number of nonconformistburial grounds, most notably those of BunhillFields in London. Dating back to 1713, the burialregisters of Bunhill Fields contain the names ofmany prominent nonconformists, includingWilliam Blake, Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan.

The act of retrospectively granting legal statusto the registers of thousands of nonconformistcongregations represents the culmination of acampaign that lasted for well over 100 years. Infact, the origins of the campaign can be tracedback to the 17th century and the passing of theTest and Corporation Acts. The legislation behindthese Acts effectively debarred nonconformistsfrom taking up positions of political influence,both locally and nationally. They did this byensuring that only those who were willing to‘receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supperaccording to the rites of the Church of England’were eligible to sit on public bodies.

The Acts also prevented nonconformists fromattending universities and from becomingMembers of Parliament or commissioned officers

in the Royal Navy or the British Army. The aimwas to crush all forms of protestantnonconformity, but in fact the legislation merelyserved to galvanize resistance.

Dr Williams’ LibraryDr Daniel Williams, a Presbyterian minister, wasone of the most prominent and influentialnonconformists of his time and when he died in1716 (he was buried at Bunhill Fields) a Trust wasset up under the terms of his will which, amongother things, enabled a library to be set updedicated to the study of protestantnonconformism. The library, which bears hisname, is still in existence today and is a primeresource for anyone researching the history ofprotestant nonconformism in England and Wales.

Dr Williams had also been involved inestablishing a pressure group known as theGeneral Body of the Three Denominations, whichaimed to represent the collective interests of thePresbyterians, Independents and Baptists. Afterhis death, the group’s influence continued togrow, lobbying parliament and gaining friends inhigh places.

One of the most significant acts of the groupwas to establish a birth registry. In 1742 it wasannounced that a registry had been opened, at DrWilliams’ Library, which would allow protestantdissenters the opportunity to register the births oftheir children. The amount of detail recorded wasremarkable for the time. In addition to the nameof the child, the date and place of his or her birthand the parents’ names, most of the records alsoshow the mothers’ maiden name and in manycases her parents’ names as well – a rare example

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of a family history source recording threegenerations. The father’s occupation and theprecise place of birth are also usually given.

The Registry maintained two sets of records. Twocopies of the birth certificate were produced, one ofwhich was given to the family and the otherretained at the Library. The details were then copiedinto a register, which was also kept at Dr Williams’Library, however all records were surrendered tothe Registrar General, and are among the registersnow held at The National Archives. In essence thiswas a prototype for the system that was ultimatelyadopted by the General Register Office when civilregistration was introduced in 1837.

Over the 95 years that the registry (formallyknown as the General Register of ProtestantDissenters) was in existence almost 50,000 birthswere recorded. Retrospective registrations wereencouraged so that although the registry wasopened in 1742, an entry for a birth occurring asearly as 1716 appears in the records and severalregistrations of people aged 50 or more have beenfound. In 1818 the Wesleyan Methodists openedtheir own registry, operated along almost identicallines. Over 10,000 births were recorded here in justunder 20 years.

Full EqualityIt had been hoped that the records created by thetwo registries would in time be recognized by thestate as legal records of birth but this didn’thappen until after the introduction of CivilRegistration in 1837 when the registries wereclosed and their records were authenticated bythe first Non-Parochial Registers Commission.The registers from both registries form part ofThe National Archives’ record series RG 4 whilethe copy certificates are in RG 5.

In the early years of the 19th century, thecampaign for the repeal of the hated Test andCorporation Acts started to gather pace. TheNapoleonic Wars proved a turning point: it wasgenerally accepted that the thousands ofnonconformists who had served as soldiers andsailors in the British armed forces fully deserved thesame rights as the men they had fought alongsidewho attended Church of England services.

The Acts were eventually repealed in 1828 andfull equality (as far as registration of life events wasconcerned) was achieved in July 1837 when the Actfor Registering Births, Deaths, and Marriages inEngland was passed and civil registration was setup. For the first time since 1753, nonconformistswould be able to perform their own marriageceremonies, and births and deaths would now beregistered regardless of religious persuasion.

Society of FriendsAnother prominent group of protestantdissenters which hasn’t been mentioned yet isthe Religious Society of Friends, more commonlyknown as Quakers. As with the other major

protestant denominations, their origins can betraced back to the Civil War period, but several ofthe surviving Quaker registers include entriesdating from the 17th century.

The Quakers devised a sophisticated system ofregistering births, marriages and deaths which wasbased on their own hierarchical structure of Quarterly(regional) and Monthly (local) meetings. In theory,therefore, each event should be recorded twice andthe amount of detail recorded is, again, quiteremarkable. In fact, the Quakers’ registration systemwas felt to be so well organized that their recordswere admissible as evidence in courts of law.Furthermore, Quakers were exempted from the termsof Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, and so, unlike those ofthe other dissenting protestant denominations, theirmarriage registers continue after 1753.

Another remarkable feature of the Quakers’records is that the certificates are often ‘witnessed’by scores of relatives and other members of thelocal meeting. This gives us a unique opportunityto recreate our ancestors’ social network. In 18401,445 Quaker registers were transferred to thePublic Record Office and are now held by TheNational Archives in record series RG 6.

Accessing the RecordsAll of the registers mentioned so far are searchable onthe BMDRegisters website www.bmdregisters.co.uk.Many of the records are covered by the InternationalGenealogical Index www.familysearch.org.

Record series RG 4 and RG 8 also include asignificant number of registers which, althoughnon-parochial, are not actually nonconformist. Theregisters of the British Lying-In Hospital as well asthose of the military hospitals at Greenwich andChelsea appear here along with those of a numberof foreign churches in England and Wales. Thelatter includes a large collection of registers fromthe Huguenot community.

Many registers that were missed by both of theNon-Parochial Registers Commissions have sincebeen deposited with the relevant County RecordOffice or Local Studies Library. These are coveredby the various editions of The National Index ofParish Registers, published by the Society ofGenealogists. Some churches and chapels still holdtheir own registers: these can date back to the 19thcentury or even earlier.

BEGINNER’S GUIDE... Nonconformists

Next StepsIn the nextissue, RogerNixon kicks offa new seriesfor tracingmilitaryancestors,beginning witharmy officers.

BURIAL REGISTERfor Bunhill Fields,London, showingWilliam Blake’sburial in 1827. The Genealogist /BMDRegisters / TNA, RG4/3997

Online ResourcesBMDRegisters.co.uk has digitized the Non-Parochial RegistersCommissions’ copies of nonconformist registers held at The NationalArchives. This website can be used for free using computer terminals atTNA.

Members of TheGenealogist.co.uk with a Premium annualsubscription can access the BMDRegisters website for free – simply log on toTheGenealogist and search the Nonconformist and Non-Parochial Records.

Ancestry.co.uk has digitized nonconformist registers for Londondating from 1694 to 1921, which can be searched by name, event, yearand church. This website can be accessed for free on many public librarycomputers and at TNA.

1660 Nonconformists were discriminated against in penal acts following the Restoration of Charles II

1689 The Act of Toleration granted nonconformists the freedom to worship in their own places of worship, subject to pledges of oaths of allegiance

1742 Dr Williams’ Library opened a births registry for protestant dissenters

1753 Hardwicke’s Marriage Act required a formal marriage ceremony to be held in a parish church (Jews and Quakers exempted)

1818 The Wesleyan Methodists opened their own birth registry1828 The Corporation and Test Acts, established in 1661 and 1673

respectively and extended in 1678, were repealed1829 The Roman Catholic Relief Act was the most important act of

Catholic Emancipation resulting in British and Irish Roman Catholics being officially freed from discrimination and civil disabilities

1837 Civil registration introduced for all religious denominations

T I M E L I N E

A PAGE FROM theGeneral Registerof ProtestantDissentersshowing theregistration ofSouthgatechildren fromCamberwell insouth London.