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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
The subject of the Stuart State Papers cannot be better introduced than by quoting the words of that excellent historian and admirable editor, Mr. John Bruce, words which, although written in reference to the reign of Charles I., are equally applicable to the years which preceded and followed it. The term State Papers, Mr. Bruce says, is a convenient general title, under which the papers may be easily and properly recognised—‘a title clearly applicable to them with reference to the place of their deposit, and generally so with reference to their actual character; but it is by no means put forth as a precise diplomatic description of every single document.’ For, ‘intermingled with sign manuals, proclamations, orders, and correspondence of the Council, letters of the Secretaries of State, of the Lord High Admiral, and of other important public functionaries—great and primary evidences of the acts of the King's Government—there occur papers, some entirely private’, which have ‘evidently found their way thither by the accidents to which in disturbed periods the papers of public men are subject. With some slight exceptions they are now all intermingled, and arranged chronologically in one great series. Together they form a collection of papers, public and private, general and individual, local and personal, which has not indeed the definiteness, or what may even be called the grandeur, of some of our great series of public records, but they constitute a collection which cannot be surpassed for facility of consultation, and one which … will be found to develope the facts of our national history in a way and to a degree altogether unexampled.’
page 98 note 1 Preface to the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1625, 1626.
page 101 note 1 See Papers relating to the State Paper Office, vol. iv. Nos. 157, 158.
page 107 note 1 These papers have been utilised and extracts from them printed by Miss Lennard in her history of the Poor Relief.
page 109 note 1 One house in Dowgate Ward, belonging to Sir F. Clarke, was reported as containing eleven married couples and fifteen single persons. Another, in Silver Street, containing ten rooms, accommodated ten families, ‘divers of whom had lodgers.’
page 109 note 2 His charge was 20l. for a half-length and 25l. for a full-length (equal, perhaps, to about 80l. and 100l. at the present day), but the King usually insisted on an/abatement.
page 110 note 1 This is the origin of the mysterious E, G, or I which searchers have to write on their tickets when sending for these documents.
page 114 note 1 Manuscript indexes of these were also compiled (now, I believe, in the Literary Search Room at the Public Record Office), which are valuable and accurate, but not very easy to use, as no distinction is made between an important and a merely casual mention of a name; there are no cross references to the variants in spelling, and the old references to numbers and volumes are confusing. The best plan for finding anything mentioned in these indexes is to compare them with the list given by Mrs. Everett Green at the beginning of vol. i. of her Calendar, where old and new references are placed side by side. It has, I fear, been a cause of perplexity to students that many names in the manuscript indexes do not appear in the indexes of the Calendar. The explanation of this is that all the papers relating to any case are not noticed in the Calendar. If they had been, its five volumes would have extended to fifteen. The principal papers–petitions, letters, orders, &c.—are calendared, and the references given on the right-hand margin of the pages; certificates, particulars of estates, accounts, depositions, reports, &c., are, for the most part, not calendared, but their references are given on the left-hand margin. A list of the meaning of these references will be found at the beginning of vol. ii. of the Calendar.
page 115 note 1 For a list of these, see Appendix IV. of Dr. W. A. Shaw's English Church during the Civil War and under the Commonwealth.
page 116 note 1 These records, like those of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, are calendared in the regular series of Domestic State Papers.
page 118 note 1 The Calendar for the years 1655–1657 was issued in 1876. It is most earnestly to be hoped that so important a work will not be allowed to fall to the ground.
page 120 note 1 See Introduction to vol. i. of the Hist. MSS. Commissioners' Report on the MSS. of the Duke of Portland.
page 121 note 1 Vol. i. p. 460.
page 123 note 1 For a list of some other collections containing papers of this period, see Appendix.
page 126 note 1 The question of foreign texts does not, of course, fall within the scope of his paper, but it may be mentioned that there are two printed ‘sources’ from the French archives which are exceedingly useful in identifying foreign names and verifying dates, viz. the correspondence of Richelieu and Mazarin and the administrative correspondence of Louis XIV., &c., in Documents Inédits sur l' Histoire de France, and also the work, still in progress, of the Recueil des Instructions données aux Ambassadeurs et Ministres de France, with its admirable notes.
page 127 note 1 The same remark applies to Mr. Lemon's Calendars of the reign of Elizabeth. Mr. Brewer alone—with the Henry VIII. papers—calmly pursued his own way, made his abstracts as full as he liked, and wrote prefaces as long as a volume.
page 131 note 1 These Civil War papers are now, most of them, in the possession of Capt. Charles Lindsay.
page 132 note 1 There are other collections in this volume which contain a certain number of documents belonging to this same period.