Chapter 3

CHURCH RECORDS, PART 2: THE PARISH

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the most important single institution in the life of the majority of the population was the parish. This was not just because of the religious significance of the parish, as important as that was, but because legislation passed under the Tudors led to the parish being an important secular institution, too, superseding the manor. The parish was the lowest administrative unit of both church and state, and by the eighteenth century there were about 10,000 of them in England.