Although there was a legal requirement from earliest times to register all marriages (by having them performed in an Established Church) there was no such requirement for the registration of births (by having a baptism performed in the rites of the Established Church).

As Frances explains, record keeping was not high on the list of priorities of many parish priests, and baptism also seems to have been low on many parents's priorities, so it is not unusual to find a marriage record with no corresponding baptismal record.