Registers (authenticated by the Non-Parochial Registers Commissioners) of births, baptisms, deaths, burials and marriages. Unofficial registers form the majority of the series, but there are a few official Anglican registers, kept by institutions outside the normal Church of England parish structure.
Electronic images of these records can be searched online through our partner website.
The unofficial registers are mainly of non-conformist and Roman Catholic congregations in England and Wales, including a number of registers from Scottish churches in England. Registers of English dissenting congregations are very rare before active persecution stopped; most come from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and after 1754 they do not, in general, include marriages. The earliest registers belong to the French and other foreign Protestant churches in England who were granted toleration well before any native dissent was made lawful; they also includes the Dutch, French and German Chapels Royal at St James's Palace.
There are also registers from the English church at St Petersburg, Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals, and, contains some of the registers and other records of burials at burial grounds and non-denominational cemeteries, particularly the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, London (1713-1854); the South London Burial Ground, Walworth, London (1819-1837); and the Necropolis Burial Ground, Everton, Liverpool, Lancashire (1825-1837). Also the registers of the Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist registry at Dr Williams' Library and the Wesleyan Methodist Metropolitan Registry, with indexes.
A further register of the Chapel Royal can be found in PRO 30/19