NEGLECTED NATIONAL RECORDS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 217, 13 October 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEGLECTED NATIONAL RECORDS.

LETTERS TO HEXJtY VIII. TAKEN TO WRAP IT FISH. * If by any chance some scrap of ancient parchment comes into your hands, examine it carefully, as if you are exceptionally fortunate you may come across a document that rightly belongs to our public records and throws light on an abscure point of history; or it may lie merely a legal deed relating to some private* transaction, often equally valuable iu its way. Such finds are far less common than they were, though not infrequently, when a country solicitor dies, chests of musty old documents are sold for what they trill fetch. If the ancient brief boxes of every old firm of solicito-s were examined, many inu-resting finds would be made. Few people trouble to vis t the Record Office between Chancery and Fester Lanes, London, though not many would! bo much the wiser if they chl, but thfi building in its way is really more interesting than th.c Briti.«h Museum itself, for it contains most of the Pubic Records of England fo.' many centuries. Perhaps it would be correct to say what remain of them, to rit is only within quite recent years that any systematic attempt ha« oeei made to keep our national documents methodically, and sort into order th* vast number that alreadv exist.

A SIX HUNDRED YEARS SCANDAL.

Sveral attempts have been made, but it was not until about a century ago that the matter was really taken in hand, and only with'n the past ten years that the subject has been closely inquired into. Yet the scandal connected with the treatment of our national archive- is nearly six hundred yeans old, even that somewhat Lax monarch Edward 11. complaining in 1320 that the public documents were not looked after as they should have bo^q. An d matters got worse as the centuries rolled on. Ministers would abstract papers that interested them or perhaps som? that d'd not redound to their credit. Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Leicester, calmly walked off with many, few of which come bac* to the proper owners, being used for all £orts of purposes. Valuable State papers w,cre burnt r>r destroyed, including the letters if Charles 1. and his Queen. Thurlo*, Secretary of State to Cromwell, buried four great chests of the official documents of the Commonwealth, and burned them to prevent them coming into the hands of Charles's M'-n'sters. Friends of public officials obtained tho loan of State papers, and never returned them; others were sent to Ambassadors abroad, with the same result, so that it is not surprising that, papers dealing with important episodes of our history have disappeared. The original of a treaty between Britain and Holland in 1654 was bought at <m auction, and another with Portugal was found on a stall in the street.

AN ECHO OF THE ARMADA. A document dealing with the original raising of our first regiment of Foot Guards, and another which gives the particulars of the measures adopted to prevent a landing from the Groat Armada, were offered at auction. But we must remember that before the days of the' Record Office the national documents wore stored anywhere and anyhow, and that unauthorised persons had accessto them, although nominally no one was supposed to examine them without a permit. When Charles 11. returned home *o his Throne William Prynne made a valiant effort to sort thtm into order and keep them clean; h.e set a number of women and soldiers to work, but ther got tired "of ths noisome work,'' and the clerks were also unwilling to touch them, "for fear of fouling their fingers, spoiling their clothes, endangering their eyesight and healths by thai cankerous dust and evil scent." So as the centuries mounted up, this '" dung-heap" of documens, containing "many rare, ancient, precious pearls and golden records," to quote Prynne again, accumulated in various places, tlie prey of damp and rats. Parchment dissolved into jelly or became to brittle to handle, scrolls made fine nests for rats, and then served them equally well for tombs, hasty removals when fire broke out made confusion worse confounded, and even now there am sacks and sacks of ancient documents which have been examined only hast'ly. In 1755 a King's Messenger stole twenty-two bags of old documents, while in 1836 several tons of paper and parchments lying in a cellar of Somerset House weres old as wa*te to tobacconists, fishmongers, and the like *or wrappng paper. A clerk who knew little about old documents, and could not read ancient handwriting, was appointed to see that nothing of importance was taken away, so that we may not l>e surprised to hear that among the papers bought from a fishmonger were a letter from Pope Leo X. to Henry VIII. concerning the preferment of Wolsey, a warrant for the first year's expenses or the settlement of New South Wales signed by George 111. and Pitt, and other equally valuable. These had been stored in a vault below the level of the Thames at high water, not exactly calculated to preserve them; in fact, a pastrycook who bought some parchment for the purpose of making jelly found it too bad to use. Amang a lot of parchments purchased by a gold-beater were some strips too narrow for his use. So he sold thrni at three a penny to boys to whip tops with. These were records of tlk- Court to Common Pleas.

ORDER OUT OF CHAOS. Since tlio Records have all been brought together under the supervision of one department, some order is being made out of chaos, and many Ta!uable volumes of transcriptions of some of them are being issued from time to time, ell full of romance, though read by few except scholars. " Erin now finds are not rare. Foreign searchers arj often paid by universities and learned societies to go through our records, and Americans have made some interesting discoveries, one of tine most notable being in connection .with Shakespeare, the sito of the Old Globe theatre, and other things. Less than thirty years ago a numlior of sacks supposed to contain documents dealing with Chancery matters w.ere being sorted when an original document bearing on Magna Chata was found.