of an older
register (on paper) now lost. Another register, on paper, dates from
1595, and contains baptisms down to 1610, marriages to 1629, and
burials to 1608. Thenceforward, with few exceptions, the registers are
complete. The register of baptisms, 1607-1629, contains a quaint
composition:

"Lo, heare thou maiest with mortall eie beholde
Thy name recorded by a mortall wighte;
But if thou canst looke but spiritualie
Unto that God which gives such heavenly sighte
Thou maiest behold with comfort to thy soule
Thy name recorded in the heavenly roule.
And therefore praie the Register of heaven
To write thy name within the booke of life;
And also praie thy sinns maie be forgeven,
And that thou maiest flee all ceare and strife:
That when thy mortall bodies shall have end,
Thy soule maie to the immortal bliss ascende.
"_Per me_, GUILIELMUS PARKE, 1609."

=Arms of the Abbey.=--The arms are gules, within a border argent, a
cross engrailed or, and are so given by Willis in his _Seals of
Parliamentary Abbeys_, and by Tanner in _Notitia Monastica_. In Sir
Charles Isham's copy of the _Registrum Theokusburiae_, in a window in
the choir, and also on the old organ the border is omitted. It is also
a disputed point whether the Abbot was a mitred prelate or not.
Fuller, in his _Church History_, is in doubt about it, while Bishop
Godwin admits that some of the Abbots sat in Parliament. The Abbots,
without enjoying any prescriptive right, were summoned to Parliament
in the reigns of Henry III., Edward I., and Edward II., and the last
Abbot (Wakeman) was certainly summoned as a mitred Abbot. It may be
that the Abbot received the dignity in the time of Abbot Strensham,
who died in 1481.

=Old Tiles.=--In the Founder's Chapel (1397) are some tiles containing
the arms of Fitz-Hamon (a lion rampant), impaled with the arms of the
Abbey, a cross engrailed, and showing the head of a crosier above the
shield in the centre. In the Warwick chantry there is to be seen a set
of tiles with the arms of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Worcester, in
whose honour the chapel was built. The arms are a fess between four
crosslets with a crescent for difference. There are also some in the
Trinity Chapel, showing the arms of the Despensers, impaled with those
of Burghersh. Other tiles found in the church at different times give
the arms of De Clare, Despenser, Berkeley, De Warrenne, De Bohun,
Corb