| Description | It comprises: Receipts and payments of the churchwardens, mostly summaries only, (except, e.g., 1534-35, a year of much building at the church), but with details, including personal names, of such matters as amounts "owing for graves in the church," and received for wood sold and for rents for seats, 1526-1656, 1661-1663
Accounts, usually in more detail, of the three `collectors' (later two and then one, sometimes, and regularly from the mid 17th cent., called the `parish bailiff') of the rents of lands belonging to the chapels of St. Katherine and St. Mary and the chantry of St. Alphege, 1534-1663.
Accounts of the constables, 1660, 1661.
Accounts of the overseers of the poor given separately for the `borough' and the six `ends', each with a different overseer, 1662-1676.
Lists, annually, of those chosen as churchwardens, 1582-1720, sidesmen, 1605-1636, surveyors of the highways, 1624-1688, parish bailiff, 1638-1720.
Lists of recipients of "Mr. Whateley's [Thomas Wheatley] Dole", 1606-1718, and of later charities, 1686-1719.
Memoranda relating to many matters, including buying a bell, 1655, election of "Cheif Schoolmaster of the Free Gramer Schoole" and other school matters, 1658-1706, that the accounts of the churchwardens and the overseers of the poor "shallbee yearely taken by the parish Bayliff ...", 1660, apprenticeships, 1662, 1663, feoffees' agreements for parish property, 1663, resolutions of the vestry, 1663, new seating in the church, 1681.
The volume has, from 1648, the signatures of those approving accounts or minutes, and of the feoffees on various occasions, is paginated, includes an index (twelve pages) at the front and, on page 299, "An Alphabeticall Catalogue of all Persons enterd in this Book as placed in & having payd for Seat Roomes in the Parish Church ... for 80 years ... 1593 to ... 21 Aprill 1674". |