In the north wall of the nave there is an arched recess , a very fine piece of fourteenth-century work, with crocketed canopy and finials, and richly sculptured with oak-leaves, acorns, etc. , a fitting sepulchre for one of the de Veres, Earls Of Oxford, for whom it is said to have been designed.

IN proportion to its size, there is probably no county in England that is better worth exploring than Essex. The dimensions are stated differently by different geographers, and have in fact varied to some extent from time to time with the action of the sea, which has here given and taken land in its capricious movements, as it has done all round our island, and particularly along the eastern coast. Disre garding the projection towards the Naze on "that side, the county may roughly be described as a square. It measures about forty-four miles from north to south, and rather more from east to west, a diagonal line drawn across from Stratford to Harwich giving us seventy-two miles as the greatest length, the total area being estimated at 986,975 statute acres on the latest ordnance survey. It is a popular but mistaken notion that Essex is flat and uninteresting. True though this may be of that portion which lies immediately to the north of the Thames estuary, and of the eastern margin, as belonging to that great plain which stretches thence across Holland into Central Europe, it is certainly not true of the county as a whole. The greater part of its surface inland is covered with gently undulating hills and dales, well wooded and well watered, occasionally rising into heights of some distinction, as at High Beech (759 feet above the sea-level), and at Danbury and Laindon Hills (re spectively 600 and 620 feet), from whose summits a picturesque landscape may be seen in all directions, to disprove the fore mentioned libel on the county as deficient in natural beauty. But whatever it may lack in that respect, as compared with the more romantic scenery of other districts, is amply com pensated to the antiquary and ecclesiologist by the marks of their presence left upon the land by its former inhabitants.

...... will partly account for the very general neglect of his instructions; to which we may add the laxity of the parochial clergy in the performance of an unaccustomed duty, previously discharged (at least as regards the registration of important deaths) by the monasteries. To correct the mischief, Queen Elizabeth issued a stringent order in 1597 for the better keeping of the parish registers, and that transcripts of them should be sent every year to the respective diocesans.
That this order was not properly obeyed seems clear from the subsequent issue of another, directing that new books should be made, with leaves of vellum instead of paper, containing all the old records, " more especially from the begining of the Queen's reign in 1558."
The clause was unfortunately worded; and in many parishes advantage was taken of the loophole which it afforded to neglect the older entries altogether, or simply make selections from them at the transcriber's discretion. This will sufficiently account for the date at which so large a number of registers commence.
Anyone looking through them from that time forward will be led to notice many an hiatus which will probably never be filled up, and (in some cases) remark ably few entries of more than mere local and temporary in terest.

This species of laxity is specially noticeable during the interregnum (1649-60), when many valuable records were lost beyond recovery, in the practical extinction of the National Church. At Fryerning, for instance, which may be taken as an illustration of the general neglect, there is no allusion to the Puritans or the Civil War, or to the state of the parish under visitations of the plague; though there are hundreds of entries of burials, without the slightest information as to the cause of death, or the age and station of the deceased, whose names alone are given against the dates.

BELCHAMP WALTER (4 m. from Long Melford and Sudbury) is pleasantly situated in a vale formed by a tributary of the Stour. The church (St. Mary) has Norman work in the chancel, where also there are two Early English lancet windows, and several of the Decorated period, while the tower is a fifteenth-century addition, the whole furnishing a series of illustrations, on a small scale, showing the de velopment of Gothic architecture. The massive circular font, with rudely cut floral ornaments upon it, is of early Norman date. In the north wall of the nave there is an arched recess, a very fine piece of fourteenth-century work, with crocketed canopy and finials, and richly sculptured with oak-leaves, acorns, etc., a fitting sepulchre for one of the de Veres, Earls of Oxford, for whom it is said to have been designed. There are also three seventeenth-century inscriptions to members of the Raymond family, whose residence was, and is, at The Hall, a large mansion in the semi-classical style of Queen Anne's reign. Mrs. Raymond is now the patroness of the living, which goes with Bulmer {q.v) in the same neighbourhood. The tower contains eight bells, besides one for the clock, none ancient. Registers from 1559.

REGISTERS
In the year 1559 Queen Elizabeth I ordered registers to be kept in all Churches.

In 1623 William Smythies was appointed Vicar. He not only kept the registers most beautifully, but also copied out entries of his predecessors from 1559 onwards in a vellum bound book. The current registers are preserved in the Church safe, but the older registers are kept in the Essex County Archives.