parliament (Inst., vol. iv. p. 58), and in modern times provision for a regency has always been made by act of parliament. In Scotland the appointment of regents was always either by the assent of a council or of parliament. Thus in 1315 the earl of Moray was appointed regent by Robert I. in a council. At a later period appointment by statute was the universal form. Thus by an act of 1542 the earl of Arran was declared regent during the minority of Mary. By an act of 1567 the appointment by Mary of the earl of Moray as regent was confirmed. As late as 1704 provision was made for a regency after the death of Anne. The earliest regency in England resting upon an express statute was that created by 28 Hen. VIII. c. 7. under which the king appointed his executors to exercise the authority of the crown till the successor to the crown should attain the age of eighteen if a male or sixteen if a female. They delegated their rights to the protector Somerset, with the assent of the lords spiritual and temporal. No other example of a statutory provision for a regency occurs till 1751. In that year the act of 24 Geo. II. c. 24 constituted the princess-dowager of Wales regent of the kingdom in case the crown should descend to any of her children before such child attained the age of eighteen. A council, called the council of regency, was appointed to assist the princess. A prescribed oath was to be taken by the regent and members of the council. Their consent was necessary for the marriage of a successor to the crown during minority. It was declared to be unlawful for the regent to make war or peace, or ratify any treaty with any foreign power, or prorogue, adjourn or dissolve any parliament without the consent of the majority of the council of regency, or give her assent to any bill for repealing or varying the Act of Settlement, the Act of Uniformity, or the Act of the Scottish parliament for securing the Protestant religion and Presbyterian church government in Scotland (1707, c. 6). The last is an invariable provision, and occurs in all subsequent Regency Acts. The reign of George III. affords examples of provision for a regency during both the infancy and incapacity of a king.

The act of 5 Geo. III. c. 27 vested in the king power to appoint a regent under the sign manual, such regent to be one of certain named members of the royal family. The remaining provisions closely followed those of the act of George II. In 1788 the insanity of the king led to the introduction of a Regency bill. In the course of the debate in the House of Lords the duke of York disclaimed on behalf of the prince of Wales any right to assume the regency without the consent of parliament. Owing to the king's recovery the bill ultimately dropped. On a return of the malady in 1810 the act of 51 Geo. III. c. I was passed, appointing the prince of Wales regent during the king's incapacity. The royal assent was given by commission authorized by resolution of both Houses. By this act no council of regency was appointed. There was no restriction on the regent's authority over treaties, peace and war, or parliament, as in the previous acts, but his power of granting peerages, offices and pensions was limited. At the accession of William IV. the duchess of Kent was, by 1 Will. IV. c. 2, appointed regent, if necessary, until the Princess Victoria should attain the age of eighteen. No council of regency was appointed. By 1 Vict. c. 72 lords justices were nominated as a kind of regency council without a regent in case the successor to the crown should be out of the realm at the queen's death. They were restricted from granting peerages, and from dissolving parliament without directions from the successor. By 3 & 4 Vict. c. 52 Prince Albert was appointed regent in case any of Queen Victoria's children should succeed to the crown under the age of eighteen. The only restraint on his authority was the usual prohibition to assent to any bill repealing the Act of Settlement, &c. When George V. came to the throne a Regency Bill was again required, as his eldest son was under age, and Queen Mary was appointed. By 10 Geo. IV. c. 7 the office of regent of the United Kingdom cannot be held by a Roman Catholic. A similar disability is imposed in most, if not all, Regency REGGIO CALABRIA (anc. Regium, q.v.), a town and archiepiscopal see of Calabria, Italy, capital of the province of Reggio, on the Strait of Messina, 248 m. S.S.E. from Naples by rail. Pop. (1906) 39,941 (town); 48,362 (commune). It is the terminus of the railways from Naples along the west coast, and from Metaponto along the east coast of Calabria. The straits are here about 7 m. wide, and the distance to Messina nearly 10 The ferryboats to Messina therefore cross by preference from Villa S. Giovanni, 8 m. N. of Reggio, whence the distance is only 5 m. In 1894 the town suffered from an earthquake, though less severely than in 1783. It was totally destroyed, however, by the great earthquake of December 1908; in the centre of the town about 35,000 out of 40,000 persons perished. The cathedral, which dated from the 17th century, and the ancient castle which rose above it, were wrecked. Great damage was done by a seismic wave following the shock. The sea front was swept away, and the level of the land hereabouts was lowered. (See further MESSINA.)

Acts.

m.

REGGIO NELL' EMILIA, a city and episcopal see of Emilia, Italy, the capital of the province of Reggio nell' Emilia (till 1859 part of the duchy of Modena), 38 m. by rail N.W. of Bologna. Pop. (1906) 19,681 (town); 64,548 (commune). The cathedral, originally erected in the 12th century, was reconstructed in the 15th and 16th; the façade shows traces of both periods, the Renaissance work being complete only in the lower portion. S. Prospero, close by, has a façade of 1504, in which are incorporated six marble lions belonging to the original Romanesque edifice. The Madonna della Ghiara, built in 1597 in the form of a Greek cross, and restored in 1900, is beautifully proportioned and finely decorated in stucco and with frescoes of the Bolognese school of the early 17th century. There are several good palaces of the early Renaissance, a fine theatre (1857) and a museum containing important palaeo-ethnological collections, ancient and medieval sculptures, and the natural history collection of Spallanzani. Lodovico Ariosto, the poet (1474-1533), was born in Reggio, and his father's house is still preserved. The industries embrace the making of cheese, objects in cement, matches, and brushes, the production of silkworms, and printing; and the town is the centre of a rich agricultural district. It lies on the main line between Bologna and Milan, and is connected by branch lines with Guastalla and Sassuolo (hence a line to Modena).

Regium Lepidi or Regium Lepidum was probably founded by M. Aemilius Lepidus at the time of the construction of the Via Aemilia (187 B.C.). It lay upon this road, half-way between Mutina and Parma. It was during the Roman period a flourishing municipium, but perhaps never became a colony; and it is associated with no event more interesting than the assassination of M. Brutus, the father of Cæsar's friend and foe. The bishopric dates perhaps from the 4th century A.D. Under the Lombards the town was the seat of dukes and counts; in the 12th and 13th centuries it formed a flourishing republic, busied in surrounding itself with walls (1229), controlling the Crostolo and constructing navigable canals to the Po, coining money of its own, and establishing prosperous schools. About 1290 it first passed into the hands of Obizzo d'Este, and the authority of the Este family was after many vicissitudes more formally recognized in 1409. In the contest for liberty which began in 1796 and closed with annexation to Piedmont in 1859, Reggio took vigorous part.

REGICIDE (Lat. rex, a king, and caedere, to kill), the name given to any one who kills a sovereign. Regicides is the name given in English history at the Restoration of 1660 to those persons who were responsible for the execution of Charles I. On the 4th of April 1660 Charles II. in the Declaration of Breda promised a free pardon to all his subjects" excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by parliament," and on the 14th of May the House of Commons ordered the immediate arrest of "all those persons who sat in judgment upon the late king's majesty when sentence was pronounced." The number or regicides was estimated at 84, this number being composed of the 67 present at the last sitting of the court of justice, II others who had attended earlier sittings, 4 officers of the court and the 2 executioners. Many of them were arrested or surrendered themselves, and the House of Commons in considering the proposed bill of indemnity suggested that only twelve of the regicides, who were named, should forfeit their lives; but the House of Lords urged that all the king's judges, with three exceptions, and some others, should be treated in

this way.

Bradshaw and Pride

Eventually a compromise was agreed upon, and the bill as passed on the 29th of August 1660 divided the regicides into six classes for punishment: (1) Four of them, although dead--Cromwell, Ireton, were to be attainted for high treason. (2) The estates of twenty others, also dead, were to be subjected to fine or forfeiture. (3) Thirty living regicides were excepted from all indemnity. (4) Nineteen living regicides were also excepted, but with a saving clause that their execution was to be suspended until others were to be punished, but not capitally. (6) Two, Colonels a special act of parliament was passed for this purpose. (5) Six Hutchinson and Thomas Lister, were simply declared incapable of holding any office. Two regicides-Ingoldsby, who declared he had only signed the warrant under compulsion, and Colonel Matthew Thomlinson--escaped without punishment. A court of thirty-four commissioners was then appointed to try the regicides, and the trial took place in October 1660. Twenty-nine were condemned to death, but only ten were actually executed, the remaining nineteen

with six others being imprisoned for life. The ten who were executed at Charing Cross or Tyburn, London, in October 1660, were Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scrope, John Carew, Thomas

Scot, and Gregory Clement, who had signed the death-warrant; the preacher Hugh Peters; Francis Hacker and Daniel Axtel, who commanded the soldiers at the trial and the execution of the king; and John Cook, the solicitor who directed the prosecution. In January 1661 the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were exhumed and hanged at Tyburn, but Pride's does not appear to have been treated in this way. Of the nineteen or twenty regicides who had escaped and were living abroad, three, Sir John Barkstead, John Okey and Miles Corbet, were arrested in Holland and executed in London in April 1662; and one, John Lisle, was murdered at Lausanne. The last survivor of the regicides was probably Edmund Ludlow, who died at Vevey in 1692.

Ludlow's Memoirs, edited by C. H. Firth (Oxford, 1894), give interesting details about the regicides in exile. See also D. Masson,

Life of Milton, vol. vi. (1880), and M. Noble, Lives of the English Regicides (1798).

(A. W. H.*) REGILLUS, an ancient lake of Latium, Italy, famous in the legendary history of Rome as the lake in the neighbourhood of which occurred (496 B.C) the battle which finally decided the hegemony of Rome in Latium. During the battle, so runs the story, the dictator Postumius vowed a temple to Castor and Pollux, who were specially venerated in Tusculum, the chief city of the Latins (it being a Roman usage to invoke the aid of the gods of the enemy), who appeared during the battle, and brought the news of the victory to Rome, watering their horses at the spring of Juturna, close to which their temple in the Forum was erected. There can be little doubt that the lake actually existed. Of the various identifications proposed, the best is that of Nibby, who finds it in a now dry crater lake (Pantano Secco), drained by an emissarium, the date of which is uncertain, some 2 m. N. of Frascati. Along the south bank of the lake, at some 30 or 40 ft. above the present bottom, ran the aqueducts of the Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus. Most of the other sites proposed are not, as Regillus should be, within the limits of the territory of Tusculum.

See T. Ashby in Rendiconti dei Lincei (1898), 103 sqq., and Classical Review, 1898. (T. As.) REGIMENT (from Late Latin regimentum, rule, regere, to rule, govern, direct), originally government, command or authority exercised over others, or the office of a ruler or sovereign; in this sense the word was common in the 16th century. The most familiar instance is the title of the tract of John Knox, the First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. The term as applied to a large body of troops dates from the French army of the 16th century. In the first instance it implied "command," as nowadays we speak of "General A's command," meaning the whole number of troops under his command. The early regiments had no similarity in strength or organization, except that each was under one commander. With the regularization of armies the commands of all such superior officers were gradually reduced to uniformity, and a regiment came to be definitely a colonel's command. In the British infantry the term has no tactical significance, as the number of battalions in a regiment is variable, and one at least is theoretically abroad at all times, while the reserve or territorial battalions serve under a different code to that governing the regular battalions. The whole corps of Royal Artillery is called the Royal Regiment of Artillery." In the cavalry a regiment is tactically as well as administratively a unit of four squadrons. On the continent of Europe the regiment of infantry is always together under the command of its colonel, and consists of three or four battalions under majors or lieutenant-colonels. REGINA, the capital city of the province of Saskatchewan, Canada, situated at. 104° 36′ W. and 50° 27′ N., and 357 m. W. of Winnipeg: Pop. (1907) 9804. After the Canadian Pacific railway was completed in 1885, the necessity for a place of government on the railway line pressed itself upon the Dominion government. The North-West Territories were but little settled then, but a central position on the prairies was necessary, where the mounted police might be stationed and where the numerous Indian bands might be easily reached. The minister of the interior at Ottawa, afterwards Governor Dewdney, chose

this spot, and for a number of years Regina was the seat of the Territorial government. The governor took up his abode on the adjoining plain, and the North-West Council met each year, with a show of constitutional government about it. On the formation of the province of Saskatchewan in 1905 the choice of capital was left to the first legislature of the province. Prince Albert, Moose Jaw and Saskatoon all advanced claims, but Regina was decided on as the capital. It probably doubled in population between 1905 and. 1907. Its public buildings, churches and residences are worthy of a place of greater pretensions. It is the centre for a rich agricultural district, and for legislation, education, law and other public benefits. It remains the headquarters of the mounted police for the western provinces, and near it is an Indian industrial school of some

note.

REGINON, or REGINO OF PRÜM, medieval chronicler, was of Prüm. Here he became a monk, and in 892, just after the born at Altripp near Spires, and was educated in the monastery monastery had been sacked by the Danes, he was chosen abbot. In 899, however, he was deprived of this position and he went to Trier, where he was appointed abbot of St Martin's, a house which he reformed. He died in 915,and was buried in the abbey of St Maximin at Trier, his tomb being discovered there in 1581.

Reginon wrote a Chronicon, dedicated to Adalberon, bishop of Augsburg (d. 909), which deals with the history of the world from the commencement of the Christian era to 906, especially the history of affairs in Lorraine and the neighbourhood. The first book (to 741) consists mainly of extracts from Bede, Paulus Diaconus and other writers; of the second book (741-906) the latter part is original and valuable, although the chronology is at fault and the author relied chiefly upon tradition and hearsay for his information. The work was continued to 967 by a monk of Trier, possibly Adalbert, archbishop of Magdeburg (d. 981). The chronicle was first published at Mainz in 1521; another edition is in Band I. of the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores (1826); the best is the one edited by F. Kurze (Hanover, 1890). It has been translated into German by W. Wattenbach (Leipzig, 1890). Reginon also drew up at the request of his friend and patron Radbod, archbishop of Trier (d. 915), a collection of canons, Libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis, dedicated to Hatto I., archbishop of Mainz; this is published in Tome 132 of J. P. Migne's To Radbod he wrote a letter on music, Epistola Patrologia Latina. de harmonica institutione, with a Tonarius, the object of this being to improve the singing in the churches of the diocese. The letter is published in Tome I. of Gerbert's Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra (1784), and the Tonarius in Tome II. of Coussemaker's Scriptores de musica medii aevi. See also H. Ermisch, Die Chronik des Regino bis 813 (Göttingen, 1872); P. Schulz, Die Glaubwürdigkeit des Abtes Regino von Prüm (Hamburg, 1894); C. Wawra, De Reginone Prumensis (Breslau, 1901); A. Molinier, Les Sources de l'histoire de France, Tome I. (1901); and W. Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, Band I. (1904).

was

REGIOMONTANUS (1436-1476), German astronomer, born at Königsberg in Franconia on the 6th of June 1436. The son of a miller, his name originally was Johann Müller, but he called himself, from his birthplace, Joh. de Monteregio, an appellation which became gradually modified into Regiomontanus. At Vienna, from 1452, he was the pupil and associate of George Purbach (1423–1461), and they jointly undertook a reform of astronomy rendered necessary by the errors they detected in the Alphonsine Tables. In this they were much hindered by the lack of correct translations of Ptolemy's works; and in 1462 Regiomontanus accompanied Cardinal Bessarion to Italy in search of authentic manuscripts. He rapidly mastered Greek at Rome and Ferrara, lectured on Alfraganus at Padua, and completed at Venice in 1463 Purbach's Epitome in Cl. Ptolemaei magnam compositionem (printed at Venice in 1496), and his own De Triangulis (Nuremberg, 1533), the earliest work treating of trigonometry as a substantive science. A quarrel with George of Trebizond, the blunders in whose translation of the Almagest he had pointed out, obliged him to quit Rome precipitately in 1468. He repaired to Vienna, and was thence summoned to Buda by Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, for the purpose of collating Greek manuscripts at a handsome salary. He also finished his Tabulae Directionum (Nuremberg, 1475), essentially an astrological work, but containing a valuable table of tangents. An outbreak of war, meanwhile, diverted

the king's attention from learning, and in 1471 Regiomontanus settled at Nuremberg. Bernhard Walther, a rich patrician, became his pupil and patron; and they together equipped the first European observatory, for which Regiomontanus himself constructed instruments of an improved type (described in his posthumous Scripta, Nuremberg, 1544). His observations of the great comet of January 1672 supplied the basis of modern cometary astronomy. At a printing-press established in Walther's house by Regiomontanus, Purbach's Theoricae planetarum novae was published in 1472 or 1473; a series of popular calendars issued from it, and in 1474 a volume of Ephemerides calculated by Regiomontanus for thirty-two years (1474-1506), in which the method of "lunar distances," for determining the longitude at sea, was recommended and explained. In 1472 Regiomontanus was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV. to aid in the reform of the calendar; and there he died, most likely of the plague, on the 6th of July 1476. AUTHORITIES.-P. Gassendi, Vita Jo. Regiomontani (Parisiis, 1654); J. G. Doppelmayr, Historische Nachricht von den Nürnbergischen Mathematicis, pp. 1-23 (1730); G. A. Will, Nürnbergisches Gelehrten-Lexikon, iii. 273 (1757); P. Nicéron, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres, xxxviii. 337 (1737); J. F. Weidler, Hist. Astronomiae, p. 313; A. G. Kästner, Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 556, 572; J. F. Montucla, Hist. des mathé matiques, i. 541; E. F. Apelt, Die Reformation der Sternkunde, P. 34; M. Cantor, Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Math., ii. 254264; M. Curtze, Urkunden ur Gesch. der Math., i. 187 (1902); Corr. A str. vii. 21 (1822); G. H. Schubert, Peurbach und Regiomontan (Erlangen, 1828); A. Ziegler, Regiomontanus ein geistiger Vorläufer des Columbus (1874); J. B. J. Delambre, Hist. de l'astronomie au moyen âge, p. 284; J. S. Bailly, Hist. de l'astr. moderne, i. 311; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 87; S. Günther, Allg. Deutsche Biog., Bd. xxii. p. 564; C. G. Jöcher's GelehrtenLexikon, iii. 1959, and Fortsetzung, vi. 1551 (H. W. Rotermund, Bremen, 1819); Ersch-Gruber's Encyklopaedie, ii. th. xx. p. 205; C. T. von Murr, Memorabilia Bibliothecarum Norimbergensium, i, 74 (1786). (A. M. C.) REGISTER, a record of facts, proceedings, acts, events, names, &c., entered regularly for reference in a volume kept for that purpose, also the volume in which the entries are made. The Fr. registre is taken from the Med. Lat. registrum for registum, Late Lat. regesta, things recorded, hence list, catalogue, from regerere, to carry or bear back, to transcribe, enter on a roll. For the keeping of public registers dealing with various subjects see REGISTRATION and the articles there referred to, and for the records of baptisms, marriages and burials made by a parish clergyman, see section Parish Registers below. The keeper of a register was, until the beginning of the 19th century, usually known as a "register," but that title has in Great Britain now been superseded by "registrar"; it still survives in the Lord Clerk Register, an officer of state in Scotland, nominally the official keeper of the national records, whose duties are performed by the Deputy Clerk Register. In the United States the title is still "register." The term "register" has also been applied to mechanical contrivances for the automatic registration or recording of figures, &c. (see CASH REGISTER), to a stop in an organ, to the compass of a voice or musical instrument, and also to an apparatus for regulating the in- and outflow of air, heat, steam, smoke or the like. Some of these instances of the application of the term are apparently due to a confusion in etymology, with Lat. regere, to rule, regulate.

PARISH REGISTERS were instituted in England by an order of Thomas Cromwell, as vicegerent to Henry VIII., " supreme hedd undre Christ of the Church of Englande," in September 1538. The idea appears to have been of Spanish origin, Cardinal Ximenes having instituted, as archbishop of Toledo, registers of baptisms in 1497. They included, under the above order, baptisms, marriages and burials, which were to be recorded weekly. In 1597 it was ordered by the Convocation of Canterbury that parchment books should be provided for the registers and that transcripts should be made on parchment of existing registers on paper, and this order was repeated in the 70th canon of 1603. The transcripts then made now usually represent the earliest registers. It was further provided at both these dates that an annual transcript of the

register should be sent to the bishop for preservation in the diocesan registry, which was the origin of the "bishop's transcripts." The "Directory for the publique worship of God," passed by parliament in 1645, provided for the date of birth being also registered, and in August 1653, an Act of "Barebones' Parliament " bones' Parliament " made a greater change, substituting civil "parish registers" (sic) for the clergy, and ordering them to record births, banns, marriages and burials. The register was also to publish the banns and a justice to perform the marriage. The register books were well kept under this civil system, but at the Restoration the old system was resumed.

A tax upon births, marriages and burials imposed in 1694 led to the clergy being ordered to register all births, apart from baptisms, but the act soon expired and births were not again registered till 1836. Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act (1754), by its rigid provisions, increased the registration of marriages by the parochial clergy and prescribed entry. In 1812 parish registers became the subject of parliamentary enactment, owing to the discovery of their deficiencies. Rose's Act provided for their safer custody, for efficient bishops' transcripts, and for uniformity of system. This act continued to regulate the registers till their supersession for practical purposes, in 1837, by civil registration under the act of 1836.

In age, completeness and condition they vary much. A blue book on the subject was published in 1833, but the returns it contains are often inaccurate. A few begin even earlier than Cromwell's order, the oldest being that of Tipton, Staffs. (1513). Between 800 and 900, apparently, begin in 1538 or 1539. The entries were originally made in Latin, but this usage died out early in the 17th century: decay and the crabbed handwriting of the time render the earlier registers extremely difficult to read. There is general agreement as to the shocking neglect of these valuable records in the past, and the loss of volumes appears to have continued even through the 19th century. Their custody is legally vested in the parochial clergy and their wardens, but several proposals have been made for their removal to central depositories. The fees for searching them are determined by the act of 1836, which prescribes half a crown for each certified extract, and sixpence a year for searching, with a shilling for the first year. The condition of the "bishops' transcripts" was, throughout, much worse than that of the parish registers, there being no funds provided for their custody. The report on Public Records in 1800 drew attention to their neglect, but, in spite of the provisions in Rose's Act (1812), little or nothing was done, and, in spite of their importance as checking, and even sometimes supplementing deficient parish registers, they remained unarranged, unindexed and unconsultable." Of recent years, however, some improvement has been made. It has also been discovered that transcripts from peculiars" exist in other than episcopal registries.

66

Outside the parochial registers, which alone were official in character, there were, till 1754, irregular marriage registers, of which those of the Fleet prison are the most famous, and also registers of private chapels in London. Those of the Fleet and of Mayfair chapel were deposited with the registrargeneral, but not authenticated. The registers of dissenting chapels remained unofficial till an act of 1840 validated a number which had been authenticated, and was extended to many others in 1858. Useful information on these registers, now mostly deposited with the registrar-general, will be found in Sims' Manual, which also deals with those of private chapels, of English settlements abroad preserved in London, and with English Roman Catholic registers. These last, however, begin only under George II. and are restricted to certain London chapels.

The printing of parish registers has of late made much progress, but the field is so vast that the rate is relatively slow. There is a Parish Register Society, and a section of the Harleian Society engaged on the same work, as well as some county societies and also one for Dublin. But

so many have been issued privately or by individuals that reference should be made to the lists in Marshall's Genealogist's Guide (1893) and Dr Cox's Parish Registers (1910), and even this last is not perfect. The Huguenot Society has printed several registers of the Protestant Refugees, and Mr Moens that of the London Dutch church. There are also several registers of marriages alone now in print, such as that of St Dunstan's, Stepney, in 3 vols. Colonel Chester's extensive MS. collection of extracts from parish registers is now in the College of Arms, London, and the parishes are indexed in Dr Marshall's book. MS. extracts in the British Museum are dealt with in Sims' Manual.

In Scotland registers of baptisms and marriages were instituted by the clergy in 1551, and burials were added by order of the Privy Council in 1616; but these were very imperfectly kept, especially in rural parishes. Yet it was not till 1854 that civil registration was introduced, by act of parliament, in their stead. Some 900 parish registers, beginning about 1563, have been deposited in the Register House, Edinburgh, under acts of parliament which apply to all those prior to 1819. Mr Hallen has printed the register of baptisms of Muthill Episcopal Church.

In Ireland, parish registers were confined to the now disestablished church, which was that of a small minority, and were, as in Scotland, badly kept. Although great inconvenience was caused by this system, civil registration of marriages, when introduced in 1844, was only extended to Protestants, nor was it till 1864 that universal civil registration was introduced, great difficulty under the Old Age Pensions Act being now the result. No provision was made, as in Scotland, for central custody of the registers, which, both Anglican and Nonconformist, remain in their former repositories. Roman Catholic registers in Ireland only began, apparently, to be kept in the 19th century.

In France registers, but only of baptism, were first instituted in 1539. The Council of Trent, however, made registers both of baptisms and of marriages a law of the Catholic Church in 1563, and Louis XIV. imposed a tax on registered baptisms and marriages in 1707.

See Burn, The History of Parish Registers (1829, 1862); Sims, Manual for the Genealogist (1856, 1888); Chester Waters, Parish Registers in England (1870, 1882, 1887); Marshall, Genealogist's Guide (1893); A. M. Burke, Key to the Ancient Parish Registers (1908); J. C. Cox, Parish Registers of England (1910); W. D. Bruce, Account of the Ecclesiastical Courts of Record (1854); Bigland, Observations on Parochial Registers (1764); Report of the Commissioners on the state of Registers of Births, &c. (1838); Lists of Nonparochial Registers and Records in the custody of the RegistrarGeneral (1841); Report on Non-parochial Registers (1857); Detailed List of the old Parochial Registers of Scotland (1872). (J. H. R.) REGISTRATION. In all systems of law the registration of certain legal facts has been regarded as necessary, chiefly for the purpose of ensuring publicity and simplifying evidence. Registers, when made in performance of a public duty, are as a general rule admissible in evidence merely on the production from the proper custody of the registers themselves or (in most cases) of examined or certified copies. The extent to which registration is carried varies very much in different countries. For obvious reasons, judicial decisions are registered in all countries alike. In other matters no general rule can be laid down, except perhaps that on the whole registration is not as fully enforced in the United Kingdom and the United States as in continental states. The most important uses of registration occur in the case of judicial proceedings, land, ships, bills of sale, births, marriages and deaths, companies, friendly and other societies, newspapers, copyrights, patents, designs, trade marks and professions and occupations. In England registrars are attached to the privy council, the Supreme Court and the county courts. In the king's bench division (except in its bankruptcy jurisdiction) the duty of registrars is performed by the masters. Besides exercising limited judicial authority, registrars are responsible for the drawing up and recording of various stages of the proceedings from the petition, writ or

plaint to the final decision. With them are filed affidavits, depositions, pleadings, &c., when such filing is necessary. The difference between filing and registration is that the documents filed are filed without alteration, while only an epitome is usually registered. The Judicature Act 1873 created district registries in the chief towns, the district registrar having an authority similar to that of a registrar of the Supreme Court. In the admiralty division cases of account are usually referred to the registrar and merchants. The registration in the central office of the supreme court of judgments affecting lands, writs of execution, recognizances and lites pendentes in England, and the registration in Scotland of abbreviates of adjudications and of inhibitions, are governed by special legislation. All these are among the incumbrances for which search is made on investigating a title. Decisions of criminal courts are said to be recorded, not registered, except in the case of courts of summary jurisdiction, in which, by the Summary Jurisdiction Act 1879, a register of convictions is kept. Probates of wills and letters of administration, which are really judicial decisions, are registered in the principal or district registries of the probate division. In Scotland registration is used for giving a summary remedy on obligations without action by means of the fiction of a judicial decision having been given establishing the obligation.. See also the separate articles LAND REGISTRATION; SHIPPING; BILL OF SALE; COMPANIES; FRIENDLY SOCIETIES; BUILDING SOCIETIES; PRESS LAWS; COPYRIGHT; TRADE MARKS; PATENTS, &C.

Registration of Voters.-Prior to 1832 the right of parliamentary electors in England was determined at the moment of the tender of the vote at the election, or, in the event of a petition against the return, by a scrutiny, a committee of the House of Commons striking off those whose qualification was held to be insufficient, and, on the other hand, adding those who, having tendered their votes at the poll, with a good title to do so, were rejected at the time. A conspicuous feature of the Reform Act of that year was the introduction of a new mode of ascertaining the rights of electors by means of an entirely new system of published lists, subject to claims and objections, and after due inquiry and revision forming a register of voters. Registration was not altogether unknown in Great Britain in connexion with the parliamentary franchise before the Reform Acts of 1832. Thus in the Scottish counties the right to vote depended on the voter's name being upon the roll of freeholders established by an act of Charles II.; a similar register existed in Ireland of freeholders whose freeholds were under £20 annual value; and in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge the rolls of members of Convocation and of the Senate were, as they still are, the registers of parliamentary voters. But except in such cases as the above, the right of a voter had to be determined by the returning officer upon the evidence produced before him when the vote was tendered at a poll. This necessarily took time, and the result was that a contested election in a large constituency might last for weeks. The celebrated Westminster election of 1784, in which the poll began on the 1st of April and ended on the 17th of May, may be mentioned as an illustration. Moreover, the decision of the returning officer was not conclusive; the title of every one who claimed to vote was liable to be reconsidered on an election petition, or, in the case of a rejected vote, in an action for damages by the voter against the returning officer.

The inconvenience of such a state of things would have been greatly aggravated had the old practice continued after the enlargement of the franchise in 1832. The establishment of a general system of registration was therefore a necessary and important part of the reform then effected. It has enabled an election in the most populous constituency to be completed in a single day. It has also been instrumental in the extinction

of the "occasional voter," who formerly gave so much trouble to returning officers and election committees the person, namely, who acquired a qualifying tenement with the view of using it for a particular election and then disposing of it. The period of qualification now required in all cases, being fixed with reference to the formation of the register, is necessarily so long anterior to any election which it could affect, that the purpose or intention of the voter in acquiring the qualifying tenement has ceased to be material, and is not investigated.

England. The reform of parliamentary representation in 1832 was followed in 1835 by that of the constitution of municipal corporations, which included the creation of a uniform qualification (now known as the old burgess qualification) for the municipal franchise. In 1888 the municipal franchise was enlarged, and was at the same time extended to the whole country for the formation of constituencies to elect county councils; and in 1894 parochial electors were called into existence for the election of parish councils and for other purposes. Inasmuch as provision was made for the registering of persons entitled to votes for the above purposes, there are now three registers of voters, namely, the parliamentary register, the local government register (i.e. in boroughs under the Municipal Corporation Acts, the burgess rolls, and elsewhere the county registers) and the register of parochial electors. Under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 the registration of burgesses, though on similar lines to that of parliamentary voters, was entirely separate from it. Since, however, the qualification for the municipal franchise covered to a great extent the same ground as that for the parliamentary franchise in boroughs which sent members to parliament, a considerable number of voters in such boroughs were entitled in respect of the same tenement to be upon both parliamentary register and burgess roll. The waste of labour involved in settling their rights twice over was put an end to in 1878, when the system of parliamentary registration was extended to the boroughs in question for municipal purposes, and the lists were directed to be made out in such a shape that the portion common to the two registers could be detached and combined with the portion peculiar to each, so as to form the parliamentary register and the burgess roll respectively. This system of This system of registration was extended to the non-parliamentary boroughs and to the whole country in 1888, the separate municipal registration being completely abolished.

Pro

The procedure of parliamentary registration is to be found in its main lines in the Parliamentary Registration Act 1843, which superseded that provided by the Reform Act of 1832, and has itself been considerably amended by later legiscedure. lation. The acts applying and adapting the system to local government and parochial registration are the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act 1878, the County Electors Act 1888, and the Local Government Act 1894. Registration is carried out by local machinery, the common-law parish being taken as the registration unit; and the work of preparing and publishing the lists, which when revised are to form the register, is committed to the overseers. The selection of these officers was no doubt due to their position as the rating authority, and to their consequent opportunities for knowing the ownership and occupation of tenements within their parish. They do not always perform the duties themselves, other persons being empowered to act for them in many parishes by general or local acts of parliament but in all or almost all cases they are entitled to act personally if they think fit, they sign the lists, and the proceedings are conducted in their

name.

In order to render intelligible the following summary of the procedure, it will be necessary to divide the voters to be registered into classes based on the nature of their qualification, since the practice differs in regard to each class. The classes are as follows: (1) Owners, including the old forty-shilling freeholders, and the copyholders, long leaseholders and others entitled under the Reform Act of 1832 to vote at parliamentary elections for counties; (2) occupiers, including those entitled to (a) the £10 Occupation qualification, (b) the household qualification and (c) the old burgess qualification; (3) lodgers, subdivided into (a) old, i.e. those on the previous register for the same lodgings, and (b) new; (4) those entitled to reserved rights, i.e. in addition to those (if any still remain) who were entitled to votes before the Reform Act of 1832 in respect of qualifications abolished by that act, (a) free

hold and burgage tenants in Bristol, Exeter, Norwich, and Nottingham, and (b) liverymen of the City of London and freemen of certain old cities and boroughs, whose right to the parliamentary franchise was permanently retained by the same act. In regard to these classes it may be said that the general scheme is that owners must make a claim in the first instance before they can get their names upon the register, but that, once entered on the register, the names will be retained from year to year until removed by the revising barrister; that the lists of occupiers and of freehold and burgage tenants are made out afresh every year by the overseers from their own information and inquiries, without any act being required on the part of the voters, who need only make claims in case their names are omitted; that lodgers must make claims every year; and that liverymen and freemen are in the same position as occupiers, except that the lists of liverymen are made out by the clerks of the several companies, and those of freemen by the town clerks, the overseers having nothing to do with these voters, whose qualifications are personal and not locally connected with any parish.

The overseers and other officers concerned are required to perform their duties in connexion with registration in accordance with the instructions and precepts, and to use the notices and forms prescribed by Order in Council from time to time. The Registration Order, 1895, directs the clerk of every county council, on or within seven days before the 15th of April in every year, to send to the overseers of each parish in his county a precept with regard to the registration of ownership electors, and to every parish not within a parliamentary or municipal borough a precept with regard to the registration of occupation electors (which expression for this purpose includes lodgers as well as occupiers proper). The town clerk of every borough, municipal or parliamentary, is to send to to the registration of occupation electors. the overseers of every parish in his borough a precept with regard These precepts are set out in the Registration Order, and those issued by the town clerks differ according as the borough is parliamentary only, or municipal only, or both parliamentary and municipal; in the cases of Bristol, Exeter, Norwich and Nottingham they contain directions as to freehold and burgage tenants. The duties of the overseers in regard to registration are set out in detail in the precepts. Along with the precepts are forwarded forms of the various lists and notices required to be used, and with the ownership precept a certain the county at the time in force which contains the ownership voters number of copies of that portion of the parliamentary register of for the parish, the register being so printed that the portion relating to each parish can be detached. It is the duty of the overseers to publish on the 20th of June, in manner hereinafter described, the portion of the register so received, together with a notice to owners not already registered to send in claims by the 20th of July. Meanwhile the overseers are making_the_inquiries necessary for the preparation of the occupier list. For this purpose they may require returns to be furnished by owners of houses let out in separate tenements, and by employers who have servants entitled to the service franchise. The registrars of births, deaths and marriages are required to furnish the overseers with returns of deaths, as

must the assessed tax collectors with returns of defaulters; the relieving officers are to give information as to recipients of parochial relief. On or before the 31st of July the overseers are to make out and sign the lists of voters. These are the following: the list of ownership electors, consisting of the portion of the register previously published with a supplemental list of those who have sent in claims by the 20th of July; the occupier list; and the old lodger list, the last being formed from claims sent in by the 25th of July. The overseers do not select the names in the first and last of these lists; they take them as supplied in the register and claims. It is, however, their duty to write dead or objected" in the margin against the names of persons whom they have reason to believe to be dead or not entitled to vote in respect of the qualification described. The ownership and old lodger lists will be divided into two parts, if the register contains names of owners entitled to a parochial vote only, or if claims by owners or old lodgers have been made limited to that franchise. The occupier list contains the names of persons whom the overseers believe to be qualified, and no others, and therefore will be free from marginal objections. Except in the administrative county of London, it is made out in three divisions-division I giving the names of occupiers of property qualifying for both parliamentary and local government votes, divisions 2 and 3 those of occupiers of property qualifying only for parliamentary and only for local government votes respectively. It happens so frequently that a tenement, if not of sufficient value to qualify for the 10 occupation franchise (parliamentary and local government), qualifies both for the household franchise (parliamentary) and for the old burgess franchise (local government), that division I would in most cases be the whole list, but for two circumstances. The service franchise is a special modification of the household franchise only; and the service occupants, being therefore restricted to the parliamentary vote, form the bulk of division 2; while peers and women, being excluded from the parliamentary vote, are consequently relegated to division 3. In the administrative county of London the local government register, being coextensive with the register of parochial electors, includes