§ Sir Egerton Brydgesmoved for leave to bring in a Bill to revive the use of funeral certificates. He said that funeral certificates contained a record of the time and place of the deaths and burial of the nobility and gentry, and upper classes of society, which were certified by the executors or administrators and some near relation of the deceased, together with their marriages and issue, if any; and were filed and registered in the College of Arms. These had been in regular use from 1568 to 1680; indeed, one existed in the case of sir Thomas Brandon, K. G. as early as 1509. Of all the records which had ever been used as evidence in questions of in heritance as well to property as to titles of honour, these had been found the most 255 be official, satisfactory, and perfect. The abolition of inquisitiones post mortem, which ceased with feudal tenures before the Restoration, had been severely felt in proving pedigrees; and the disuse of funeral certificates soon after, left the main proof of these pedigrees to depend on parish registers. Now, every one most be aware of the many defects attaching to this last species of evidence. The inconvenience of resort to them, from their dispersion all over the kingdom, was not small. But it was a still worse defect of these parish registers, that they were from their nature for the most part deficient in that which fixed the identity of persons; an inconvenience of the most serious sort. Under these circumstances he was induced to bring forward the present measure. He trusted that the provisions he was about to propose for effecting it, would be found simple and practicable. The machinery was easy; and nothing of an inquisitorial or objectionable nature was intended. He proposed the returns to be obtained through the surrogates or other ecclesiastical officers, employed to grant probates and letters of administration, at the time those instruments were applied for. Nothing would be required beyond that, which must necessarily in almost all cases come within the knowledge of the executor or administrator. But he would not fatigue the House with the detail of his intended provisions, which would best be seen in the words of the Bill itself, if leave was given to bring it in. He concluded with moving, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to revive the use of funeral certificates, to record the time and place of the deaths and burials of testators and intestates."
§ Leave was accordingly given.