Cawston, Norfolk, A.D. 1578 — a leaf from the parish booke of buryalls
The parish register of Cawston (St Agnes), commenced 1 October 1538 by ordre of the Kynges Vicegerent, Mr Thomas Crumwell, Lord Privy Seal (Injunctions, the second day of September of that yere, requyring every curate to kepe a booke of crystenynges, weddynges, and buryalls in a sure cofer with two lockes). The cofer was set down at the south wall of the chancel on Michaelmas eve of that yere, & sterred not thence until the great fire of the church-roofe in 1664, which spared the cofer & scorched the boordes. The booke is bounde in browne calfe, two claspes lost. The entries from 1538 to 1612 stand in five hands; the third is the hand of Sir William Bure, curate of Cawston A.D. 1561 × 1593. Norwich Record Office, parish reg. CW/1/1, fol. 41v.
— folio 41v, the third hand, browne ink, no ruling; the column for Sepulturae the third of three, after Baptismata & Nuptiae —
The seventh line under the heading Anno Dni 1578:
Anno Dni 1578, mensis Aprilis die xiiijo, sepulta hodie in cimiterio nostro Eliz. Pevre, ux. Willelmi Bure curati huius parochiae, anno aetatis suae lxiijo. Vixit pie. — W. B.
— and below it, in the same hand, smaller, against the right margin —
Eadem fuit suster apud Wymondesfeld ante dissolucionem, quam dicebat Dame Alice annis quadraginta, vivit, vivit. Vixit. Sepulta hodie. — W. B.
Note, at the catalogue stage. The seventh line is the only entry on folio 41v in which the curate signes W. B. twice — once at the foot of the entry, once at the foot of the marginal. The marginal is the only marginal in any hand on any leaf of the register for the years 1561 × 1593. The booke holdes 6,418 buryalls from 1538 through 1893; one of them is named suster. — Calder Carbons, catalogue card, 1957.