passed into law with the signing of the Ordnance of Villers-Cotterets in 1539. However, it was not until 1666 where after perceiving the immense advantages to be gained through civil registration that King Louis XIV revitalized the parish registration system in France and her colonies. This edict, set forth by the king, made it compulsory for individuals to register within their parish communities. Moreover, in 1667 the king revealed the Ordonnance de Saint Germain en Laye, a piece of legislation which required parish priests to produce a duplicate of all registers so that all copies may be stored in emerging records offices. In New France, these duplicates were stored in Quebec and Montreal’s Courts of Justice official records office and listed New France’s Roman Catholic population exclusively. It was only until after cession and the British conquest of New France in 1760 that parish registers began to more openly include Protestants within the registry, and as civil subjects of Quebec. Sweden Parish registers have been kept for each parish by the Church of Sweden for some Swedish counties (Västmanland and Dalarna) since the 1620s, and generally for the whole Sweden since the 1670s. The church was ordered to keep even more detailed church books in king Charles XI's Church Law from 1686. The primary motivation was to keep track of the number of soldiers that were taken out from each parish, and that were financed by each parish, through the allotment system that was introduced in 1682. Another motivation was to keep track of religious knowledge, literacy and health among the population. The church books constitute of birth, death, marriage and moving in/out records, all of which were linked to the parish catechetical book, which was replaced in 1895 by the parish book. In country side parishes, each village or industrial town had its own section in the catechetical book, each farmyard its own page, and each person its own row. For city parishes, the book was divided into districts. The majority of church records are still preserved in the state archives, and available electronically over the Internet. Contents and examples from England The contents have changed over time, not being standardised in England until the Acts of 1753 and 1812. The following are among what you can expect to find in later registers, though in the earlier ones it is quite common to find only names recorded. Early entries