What parish does this say?

[jillruss]

This is probably a very tall order because it is such a bad copy, but here goes!

I hope I am attaching a copy of an entry in the 1693 Bray, Berkshire marriage PRs. It really is terrible writing and my copy is not that good either.

Believe it or not ( ) the second to bottom entry says:

Thomas Gorvis of ------& Joanne Levin by licence.

Can anyone make out which parish Thomas is supposed to be from? I think it starts with either a 'B' or an 'R' and ends with a 'y' and am assuming (probably wrongly!) that it's not too far from Bray otherwise the clerk would have included the county as well.

help!

Jill

[Cas (stallc)]

Do you think it could be Purley?

Check the way the  'r' is with others

Parishes link for area.

http://www.brazell.net/genuki/BRK/Parishes.html

Cas

[jillruss]

Hi Cas,

With your help - by George, I think I've got it!

It was with you saying Purley that made me think of Hurley. If you look at the 'H' at the start of 'Henry' 4 lines above, I think 'H' is the first letter of my mystery parish. I would never in a month of Sundays thought of it starting with a 'H' without your suggestion of Purley. I've also learned something else - the only Purley I knew of was the one in London.

Thanks again,
Jill

[Necromancer]

Nice result Jill !

If you do a lot of this, might be worth downloading the PARLOC utility ? It lets you search for a parish name (full or partial) and then allows a search of adjacent Parish names within a specified radius of the one you found ..

http://www.parloc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ParLoc.htm

[Cas (stallc)]

Hi Jill,

Glad you cracked it!  Agree about the 'h' 

Cas