INTRO DUCTORY. Rymer's Foedera. unfavourably contrasted by a political writer in the year 1655, with the conduct of the French and the Italians.' The very name of 'Treasury,' as applied to the offices in which the state papers were deposited, is expressive of this exclusiveness. The first treaty committed to the press and published by royal authority was that with Spain, in the reign of James I., dated August 18, 1604. The theory, however, may be said to have received its death-blow in the course of the Civil War, when the interest which both the contending parties claimed to take in the highest matters of state made the former secrecy no longer possible. The four treaties of Breda were printed by the order of Charles II. in 1667, and between the Restoration and the Revolution of 1688 all the public treaties to which Great Britain was a party were published by royal authority. At last, in the year 1693, mainly, it would appear, at the suggestion of the eminent statesmen, Somers and Halifax, THOMAS RYMER, in his capacity of historiographer royal, was appointed to transcribe and publish all the leagues, treaties, alliances, capitulations, and confederacies which had, at any time, been made between the Crown of England and other kingdoms. As the result of these instructions there successively appeared, in the early part of the eighteenth century, the volumes of his well-known Foedera, the series being continued by his assistant, Robert Sanderson, in the year 1735. The work, as it issued from the press, attracted considerable attention both at home and on the Continent, and, though severely criticised, has generally been admitted to be a collection of the highest value and authority. It commences with the reign of Henry I. (ann. 1134), and extends to 1654. A new edition, published at the Hague, 1737-45, is of greatly superior typo 'See preface to Sir Dudley Digges' Complete Ambassador (1655). graphical accuracy; while the utility of the collection to students has been much enhanced by the Syllabus of the work by the late Sir T. D. Hardy.' INTRO DUCTORY. Parlia The Rolls of Parliament, extending from the reign Rolls of of Edward I. to the first year of the reign of Henry VII., ment are comprised in six volumes folio, and were published at the expense of the nation pursuant to the order of the House of Peers, March 9, 1767. A general Index to the six volumes was issued in 1832, after sixty-five years had been employed in its formation. There can be no doubt,' says Sir T. D. Hardy, 'that these Rolls are a most valuable and authentic source of parliamentary and constitutional history, indeed, it is questionable whether any nation in Europe possesses any materials for a history of its legislative assemblies at all comparable with these muniments.' tions of sion. In consequence of representations made to the Crown Publicaof the great value and importance of many of the papers Record and documents in the office of the Keeper of the CommisRecords, a Commission was appointed in 1825, and again in 1830, to consider what portions of this invaluable collection might be fitly printed and published with advantage to the public. As the direct result of their decision, eleven quarto volumes were published (1830 1 Vol. i. A.D. 1066-1377; vol. ii. 1377-1654. A third edition of the Foedera, undertaken by Dr. Clarke, and subsequently by Messrs. Caley and Holbrooke, for the Record Commission, remains incomplete, having been carried no further than the year 1383. Hardy's Syllabus gives the references to three editions-the original edition, the so-called Dutch edition published at the Hague, and the Record edition. Students should note in the Syllabus (vol. i. pp. i-xiv, vol. ii. pp. lv-lxvii) the useful Chronological Tables, giving the Legal, Civil, and Ecclesiastical Years, along with the regnal year of each English sovereign. 2 The term Records, taken in its most general sense, includes: (1) Inrolments which are intended to be official and authentic records of lawful acts made by the proper officer of any court upon rolls, or, in some cases, in official entry-books of the same court; (2) Memoranda of acts or Q INTRODUCTORY, Reign of Henry VIII. 1852) of the Correspondence of Henry VIII.' The plan of arrangement was, however, unfortunate, the Correspon- chronological order being, in the first instance, discarded dence of with the design of grouping the different materials under the respective subjects,-a method which proved so unsatisfactory that it was materially modified in the latter volumes. Of all these letters an abstract (often sufficient for the student's purpose) will be found in the volumes of the Calendar Series edited by the late Prof. Brewer under the title of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII., &c.—a collection which also includes abstracts of a vast number of letters not included in the volumes published by the Commissioners. Respecting the series of which the volumes edited by Mr. Brewer form a part, a few words may be of service. Calendars of State Papers. In the year 1855 the State Paper Office was incorporated with the Public Record Office, and the Master of the Rolls then suggested to the Lords of the Treasury that, notwithstanding the great value, in an historical and constitutional point of view, of the documents thus brought together, their contents were rendered almost useless to the public from the want of proper calendars and indexes. As the result of this representation, instruments brought into the proper office of any court by parties interested therein (or by their agents) either in the form of rolls or otherwise, and preserved in bundles or on files; (3) Books of entries, containing memoranda of acts, &c., entered by officers of the court; (4) State papers, which form a distinct branch of the records. These originally sprang from the Privy Council and Chancery, and now form various branches -the corre spondence and other records of the Privy Council, Secretaries of State, and all other public departments. See Handbook to the Public Records, by Mr. F. S. Thomas, 1853. State Papers, during the Reign of Henry the Eighth: with Indices of Persons and Places. Other publications of the Record Commissioners, such as Domesday Book, Catalogues of the Rolls, &c., have appeared at different times during the present century; of these a complete list can be obtained on application to Messrs. Longmans & Co., or Macmillan & Co. DUCTORY, orders were given for the preparation and publication of INTROa series of Calendars of the different divisions under which the collections have been classified (Domestic, Foreign, Colonial, Ireland). This series now reaches to nearly a hundred volumes, and the service it has rendered to historical research, whether by facilitating the consultation of the original documents, or, as is often the case, rendering such consultation unnecessary, can hardly be over-rated.1 Parlia In relation to the political and legislative history of SPECIAL the country, the Parliamentary History, originally pro- SUBJECTS. jected by WILLIAM COBBETT (a prominent democratic Cobbett's leader in the early part of the present century), comes mentary down to the year 1803, incorporating or superseding History. the earlier collections, to which, for most practical purposes, it is to be preferred. As, however, the student who has occasion to consult historical works written in the last century or in the earlier part of the present, will meet with frequent references to the older collections, it may be of service here to specify the most important. They are (1) The Parliamentary or Constitutional History Earlier of England, originally published in 1752, in eight volumes, of Parlia and expanded in subsequent editions to twenty-four; mentary (2) Sir Simonds D'Ewes' Journals of the Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth; (3) Chandler and Timberland's Debates, in twenty-two volumes; (4) Debates of the House of Commons from 1667 to 1694, collected by the Honourable Anchitell Grey, in ten volumes; (5) Almon's Debates, in twenty-four volumes; (6) Debrett's Debates, in sixtythree volumes. Cobbett's great work was continued under the title of Parliamentary Debates, a series generally known by 1 The Record Office is on the Rolls estate between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane: access to the papers can be obtained by any respectable person, on entering his name in a book kept for that purpose. There is also no restriction on copying. Collections Debates. INTRODUCTORY. Hansard. the House of Lords the name of the printer, HANSARD, which is now an annual publication. During the present century, the above sources of information have been supplemented by the publication Journals of of (1) the Journals of the House of Lords, which commence with the year 1509, and are accompanied by separate indexes; (2) the Journals of the House of Commons, commencing with the year 1547,-these volumes have likewise separate indexes, and also a general index for the period 1765-1801. and of the House of Commons. Strick- Lives of the Green's Princesses. The Lives of the Queens of England, by Miss AGNES STRICKLAND, after a brief notice of our British and Saxon queens, commence with the life of Matilda of Flanders, and continue in unbroken succession to the end of the reign of Queen Anne. The series is not distinguished by any high literary excellence, and its value is further diminished by the strong prejudices of the writer, who throughout upholds very extreme theories of ecclesiastical government and the royal prerogative. The volumes embody, however, many interesting extracts, and afford good illustrations of the court life and domestic life of successive periods. A far more solid and judicious performance is that Lives of the of Mrs. EVERETT GREEN,-The Lives of the Princesses of England, commencing with the Norman Conquest, and concluding with sketches of the lives of the four daughters of Charles I. Foss's The Lives of the Fudges of England, by Foss, commence as far back as the time of Herfastus, Chancellor in the year 1068, and extend to the Vice-Chancellorship of Sir William Page Wood in 1853. The series is the result of considerable research, and is executed with commendable fairness and accuracy. 1 Nine vols. 1848-64. A useful abridgment of the work in one volume, entitled Biographia Juridica, was published in 1870. |