snip
Where no day book survives, I don't think we can be certain that there ever was one - and in a small parish with only a handful of CMBs each year I think it's rather unlikely. It's also not certain that the Bishop's transcripts were always copied from the register. In one place I came across I'm pretty sure it was the other way round, with the BT as the first version, written up at the time of the events on loose pages, and the register as a copy of that, since a whole year had been written up very neatly in the same hand and with exactly the same pen and ink etc. (Typically I can't now remember where that was 
)
snip
Arthur
Yes I agree Arthur, it is a point I have often made that some vicars or clerics took the opportunity to "tidy up" the register by using the bishop's transcripts as register pages and sending the original pages off to the Bishop to be archived.
This example taken from "The Digest of the Parish Registers within the Diocese of Worcester previous to 1812 together with a Table of the Bishops’ Transcipts now in existence in Edgar Tower, Worcester previous to 1700" though outwith Durham exemplifies the problem with duplicated registers and transcripts.
"The Ipsley Baptism & Burial Registers for the years 1808 to 1812 have been copied from the Diocesan Registry as has the Hindlip Register for the years 1612 to 1737 ;
Volume 9 of the Bromsgrove Register contains duplicates of parts of Volumes 5 and 8 ;
Wolvery has an additional private register for the years 1678 to 1712 ;
Volume 4 of the Birmingham St. Martins contains marriage entries for the years 1753 to 1766 which are really an index of the marriages in volumes 9, 10 and part of 11."
I should also point out that Parish Registers were supposed to be compiled once a week on Sunday which in most cases a note book or day book would be kept to help the memory.
Cheers
Guy
