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III. The Pipe Rolls and the Historians, 1600–1883

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Lady Stenton
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Extract

It is a remarkable fact that the only continuous series of records which has survived from the twelfth century, the Great Rolls of the Pipe, was not completely available in print with adequate indexes until the thirties of the twentieth century. The search for an explanation takes one back to the beginnings of English medieval scholarship in the early seventeenth century. The great antiquaries of that day had not conceived the idea of printing adequately indexed editions of the records they used, for the medieval past, when books were patiently transcribed by hand for circulation, was too near. When scholars met to discuss their work it was of making copies by hand and passing them from one to another that they talked. They were concerned that the notes sent to them should be on ‘paper of the same size for bignesse as the sender first did use’. To them in the seventeenth century, the past was a virgin field in which they had no forerunners; and they themselves aimed at writing history which should stand for ever.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , 1952 , pp. 271 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1952

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References

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78 C. P. Cooper, Public Records, I, p. 317, quoted from an unpublished tract written by William Illingworth, who said in it that ‘the fees at the Pipe Office are five times the amount stated in the return of the late Mr Lowton, Deputy Clerk of the Pipe in the year 1800; and the attorneys demanding these fees are unable to read any of the Rolls’. Nicolas, N. Harris, Letter to … Lord High Chancellor (London, 1832)Google Scholar, Appendix, p. 132.

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98 At the end of this article I should like to acknowledge most gratefully my debt to the many scholars who have elucidated the history of English records. I owe much, for example, to Professor D. C. Douglas for the stimulus of his book on English Scholars, and to Dr C. E. Wright and Mr Philip Styles for their work on the antiquarian circles of the mid-seventeenth century. But above all I wish to record my thanks to Sir Charles Firth for an introduction to the subject, for the gift of books bearing upon it, and for the memory of conversations in a study where William Lambarde, Joseph Hunter and all others of their kind moved again as living men.