Living in sin

[majm]

Re  the Churching of new mothers. 

You may find that the Church of England clergy may have recorded the name of their parishioner being Churched in their parish registers.  The clergy may have declined to allow their participation in the Communion Service after giving birth until they had been Churched .... after each delivery.

I am transcribing some CofE parish registers for New South Wales, Australia from 1787-1828... and even where a baby has been still born, the woman needs to be Churched.  And the event then recorded in the register.

So for example, the parish register gives  a marriage in March 1816, a Churching in early October 1816,  no sighting of a baby's baptism or burial.

Twelve months later,  a Churching on a weekday and a baby boy's baptism and further years ... more babies, more Churchings ....

A family Bible has the marriage and  all the baptisms  plus between the marriage and the first of the baptisms

  '31 August 1816'  with no name.   To me, and to others with long involvement in family history research,  that entry indicates a still birth. 

Sorry for going off topic from original post.

JM

[Maiden Stone]

Re  the Churching of new mothers. 

You may find that the Church of England clergy may have recorded the name of their parishioner being Churched in their parish registers.  The clergy may have declined to allow their participation in the Communion Service after giving birth until they had been Churched .... after each delivery.

I am transcribing some CofE parish registers for New South Wales, Australia from 1787-1828... and even where a baby has been still born, the woman needs to be Churched.  And the event then recorded in the register.

As Stan explained in post #29, a churching ceremony was intended as thanksgiving for the woman's survival. If the baby was alive by the time the woman was churched, it was customary for her to present her baby's chrism cap. If the baby died within a few weeks of baptism the cap would have been buried with it.  The churching ceremony was also traditionally the occasion when the new mother re-entered society, including church society, after her confinement. A woman's confinement lasted longer than in modern times - for some weeks before the birth and 6 weeks after. She remained at home during this period, for protection of herself & baby, ideally doing no work, not even household duties.
Unmarried mothers were the only ones who were required to confess their sin before being churched.
Fathers weren't churched in days gone by because a father wasn't at risk of perishing as a consequence of his child being born.     

[Maiden Stone]

The vicar may have considered that Elizabeth Harrison persisted in sin and was unrepentant. If Elizabeth's lover had a wife, he and Elizabeth had committed the sin of adultery. If neither had a living spouse, they were guilty of fornication.
Were any children born to Elizabeth?

[Guy Etchells]

I have been able to upload the section of Church Law a book published in 1899 I mentioned in the earlier reply see
http://anguline.co.uk/Churching.html

Cheers
Guy

[majm]

The register of Churchings in the CofE, in NSW Australia that I have been transcribing covers the period 6 January 1811 to 27 December 1818, there are 800 or so events registered, and they were recorded by Rev William Cowper, NSW Chaplain.   

JM

[J Bux]

Maiden Stone,
I did not find any other reference to Elizabeth.  The book that came up on Family search interested me because it referred to the burial of the mother on the record of the burial of the William Hibbert on 4/10/1819.  And had a lot of other snippets so I read all of the book
John