The importance of this document for the Hingston study is that it is the first, and at the moment only, doumentary evidence I have seen for the existence of Edward Hingston (HN#30) and his wife Lucretia.
The document has been translated for me by Dr Nick White, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to whom I am very grateful.
On this day, 2 July 1833, we{2} the undersigned, priest of this parish, invested with the necessary permission and dispensation by his Excellency Monseigneur Jean Jacques Lartigue {3}, Bishop of Telmessus etc etc etc {4}, have received the renunciation of the protestant faith by John Abbott, farmer in this parish, aged 58, son of the deceased Charles Abbott and the deceased Mary Kingston {5}.
And we have baptised him unconditionally, as well as Dorothea Hingston, 55 years of age, daughter of the deceased Edward {6} Hingston and of Lucretia Sorell who {7} had already recanted in Ireland, but whose baptism was in doubt.
Moreover, we have once more received the consent to marriage from the aforementioned John Abbott and Dorothea Hingston, which they had already offered to one another in regular fashion, both being protestants.
And we have given them the nuptial blessing in accordance with the form prescribed by our mother, the Holy Catholic Church.
[Signature {8}]
1. From the content, baptism would seem to be the most logical extrapolation of the “B” in the document’s marginal title. The main body of the original in fact forms one long sentence. For clarity’s sake, I have cut this up into shorter sentences.
2. This seems to be a “royal we” i.e. clothing a singular “I”.
3. See http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Lartigue. And in more scholarly mode http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=37611&PHPSESSID=2vbckh1sscb9fn079cp53cc7g7 & http://diocesemontreal.com/histoire/eveques/lartigue/index.htm
4. Not my sloth! The original says “&c &c &c”. He then became the first Bishop of Montreal when a diocese of this name was founded in 1836, having previously played a more general role in Quebec as “Évêque auxiliaire et vicaire général, suffragant de l’évêque de Québec” (1821 - 1836). Bishop of Telmessus (Telmesse in French) seems to be a title he held as auxiliary bishop, initially supporting Jean-Octave Plessis, the first archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec, then Panet, then Signet (who took up the role in 1833).
5. The original does indeed look like a K, and different from the Hs in the subsequent Hingstons.
6. Edouard in the French text.
7. Here the syntax and punctuation of the original leave some doubt, and perhaps context would resolve things. Does the “who” refer to Lucretia Sorell renouncing her faith back in Ireland, or to Dorothea Hingston herself? The following verb “had” [“avait”] certainly refers to a single individual.
8. The surname looks to me like Chartier.