ART. V.-THE RECORD COMMISSION.

1. Report from the Select Committee on Record Commission, together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 15th August, 1836.

2. Proceedings of the Record Commissioners (or Agenda) from June, 1832, to August, 1833. Folio. Only fifty copies printed. In the library of the British Museum.

3. Octavo edition of the Report, with Notes. Published by Ridgway & Sons.

THE principal object of keeping the public records, in which term we include all the authentic certificates of legislative, legal, and executive proceedings, is their professed subserviency to the administration of justice. The utility they possess as furnishing the best materials for history, though of great importance, is rather a subordinate and accidental attribute. The immediate value and purpose of records at the time of their compilation is exclusively legal; but this value declines with their age, and afterwards assumes a character solely historical.

Thus, with the earliest public records;-a charter of King John may by possibility settle a dispute respecting a market or fair; but the majority of his mandates, like his writ to Hugh de Neville, commanding him to proclaim that whosoever should "do any harm to or speak evil of religious men or "clerks, if caught, should be hung on the nearest oak," though documents of the utmost legal importance, when monarchs were strong enough to make their pleasure their subjects' will, certainly at the present day possess more of historical curiosity than legal validity.

Various sorts of impediments, clogging the usage of the public records, have been accumulating for ages, until they have become quite insupportable. The mischievous consequences must have been grievously oppressive to suitors and to the legal profession, and must continue so as long as the administration of justice is dependent on proof of prescriptive rights.

Rot. Claus. 9 John, M. 3.

Historians as well as lawyers have grounds of complaint, but it may be remarked that writing history is a voluntary performance, whilst a suit at law is a matter of necessity.

These impediments owe their origin to a multitude of causes. To the disarrangement and confusion amongst the records themselves, the want of proper facilities of reference by means of Calendars, Catalogues, and Indexes ;—to the imposition of fees, which almost wholly impede the consultation of records in the repositories ;-to inconvenient regulations ;—to numerous and destructive places of deposit ;-and to irresponsible, negligent, and antiquated custodyship.

A commission to redress these grievances was issued in 1800, which has been reappointed from time to time. During this period a sum of £824,256,1 at the lowest calculation, has been devoted by the public to promote the good of the records of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

We propose to examine in the present article-first, the mode in which the Commissions have employed the money intrusted to them for the reformation of the record system; and then to exhibit the results of their labours, as they are shown by the present state of the records. For the means of doing so the public must thank Mr. Charles Buller. A folio volume of nearly 1100 pages, besides a report of 45, is evidence that he must have had no little toil during the last Parliamentary Session as chairman of the select committee, appointed at his instance to investigate the whole subject.

1

It would seem that this matter of record reform was beset

Composed of these items:

£362,400 at least, paid to the Commissions between 1800 and 1831, as appears from very imperfect Parliamentary returns.

48,500 paid to present Commission.

34,000 voted last session, £24,000 of which for paying the debts of the com

mission.

116,040 as salaries for custody of records at Tower and Chapter House alone. 113,316 as fees estimated on the average of the years 1829, 1830, 1831, when they had been much reduced by changes in the law of tithes, &c. (See Report of Commission now in preparation.)

30,000 at least for removal of records from one repository to another.

with difficulties which have baffled human wisdom during a period of at least five centuries, Since the 19th year of the reign of Edward II., when we find Robert de Hoton and Thomas Sibthorp1 to be Record Commissioners to arrange and methodize records and reform abuses, scarcely a single reign has passed without the formation of one commission after another, or some legislative enactment, until the 1st of William IV., when heaven sent its instrument, the Lord Brougham, to furnish a climax to these royal impotencies.

In the reign of Edward III., three commissions, a least, were issued. Statutes for the preservation of records were passed 11 Hen. IV., c. 3, and 8 Ric. II., c. 4. Henry VI., VII. and VIII. made sundry regulations. Elizabeth instituted inquiries about the records of Parliament, the Chancery, and the Exchequer. James I. proposed "an office of general remembrance for all matters of record," and a State Paper Office, which Charles II. established. His father, Charles I., likewise had issued commissions of inquiry. In the reigns of Anne, George I. and II., similar inquiries were prosecuted. Record repositories have been examined incessantly, and numerous reports and recommendations made during the 18th century by committees of Lords and Commons. Yet after all these reiterated proceedings, a committee of the House of Commons in the year 1800 addressed the King, setting forth "that the "public records of the kingdom were in many offices unarranged, undescribed, and unascertained;" that many of them were exposed to "erasure, alteration, and embezzlement, and "were lodged in buildings incommodious and insecure." Upon this discovery the King issued the first of a series of six Commissions, wherein he directs the records to be "methodized, regulated and digested"—" to be bound and secured”—“exact calendars and indexes to be made," and "original papers" to be printed. Da Capo should have been the concluding words of the Commission, for since that time to 1831, when the present Commission, with some very slight variations, was issued, the same rondo has been performed. "Methodize records," &c., in 1800; encore in 1806. "Methodize records," &c., encore in 1817.

1 Rot. Claus. 19 Ed. II. m. 26.

2 Rot. Claus, annis 34. 36; and Rot. Parl. anno 46.

"Methodize records," &c., encore in 1821. “Methodize records," &c., encore in 1825. The performers were varied, but the instruments and machinery remained entirely the

same.

The Commissions, even if disposed, possessed no sufficient powers to act: and they soon ascertained, as the present Secretary tells us, (Ev. 389,) “that the keepers of the record "offices may shut the doors in the face of the Commissioners." The accumulated abuses of five centuries were not to be swept away so easily. When methodizing records and restoration of order was attempted, the keepers protested against the "violation of their vested rights," and did "shut the doors in the face of the Commissioners." Such, indeed, were the prejudices in favour of disorder, that they even suffered the arrangement effected by the Commission in the Exchequer, to be restored to its pristine state of confusion. The Commission looked on patiently all the while.1

The Commissions abandoned their principal duty, arrangement of records, and betook themselves to printing records. Against this operation the office-keepers did NOT shut the door in the Commissioner's face. And why? because no vested rights were infringed, and it was most pleasant to receive fees2 for admitting Public Commissioners to transcribe Public Records, and to obtain the gloss of a literary reputation, and be paid five times more in hard cash for editing a record than any publisher would risk on an original composition.

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1 Mr. Vincent, the King's Remembrancer, said in 1832, (Agenda, p. 72,) “ Be"sides other accidents and inconveniences occasioned by the removal in 1822, it happened that the records which had been transcribed, and some of them printed, by "order of the Commissioners of the Public Records of the Kingdom, viz., The Inquisitiones Nonarum and None Rolls, and other records, entitled Monastic “Records,' were placed, several years before 1822, in a record room at Westmin"ster, and they, with others, were removed from the record rooms adjoining the "Court of Exchequer, to a temporary shed or building erected in Westminster Hall "and some to the Stone Tower, in 1822, by labourers, without the presence and superintendence of any officer of the Court, without any order or method, in sacks, "baskets, and on their shoulders; and some of these were found amongst the mass "of unarranged and unsorted records which were removed from the above-mentioned shed to the King's Mews at Charing Cross, in 1831, and where, it is sus

"

2

E. g. Mr. Bagbearer Winton received, as fees for mere admission, 351, 5s.--(Parl. Return.-Ev, Illingworth, 832.)

Thus the Commissions, content that the nature and extent of their operations should be limited by the very keepers over whom and whose proceedings they were appointed to preside, and content, moreover, to perform only such work as the keepers permitted them to do, provided Mr. Record Keeper Caley (its secretary) with the editorship of seventeen distinct works. Mr. Caley earned 6941. on one, the Rotuli Hundredorum ;-21001. on another, Rymer's Fœdera;—10347. on a third, the Inquisitiones post Mortem; he all the while holding the "sinecure" keepership of the Chapter House, at 4007. a year, besides fees; and the equally sinecure keepership of the Augmentation Office, which returned to him on the average for many years 600l. a year in fees, together with his secretaryship at 2007. a year. Mr. Record Keeper Vanderzee, of the Exchequer," opened the doors" on an understanding (we presume) that he should edit the " Inquisitiones Nonarum" for 10577. Mr. Record Keeper Bayley, whilst in the nominal performance of duties at the Record Office, Tower, actually received a sum of 10,7551. Of this sum 15721. were paid for some professed labours on certain calendars of "Inquisitiones post Mortem," which omitted the most valuable information (Ev. Roberts); 55721. for Rymer's Fœdera, scarcely any thing but a reprint of the old edition, with its errors (Ev. Beltz, 6730, &c.—Ev. Tytler, 4287, &c.); and 36117. for Calendars to the Chancery Proceedings.1

A committee of the present Commissioners passed a judgment on this production, strongly censuring it. So valuable a recherché did the Commission regard this judgment, that twenty-five copies only were printed on the finest drawing paper at the public expense. The name of each Commissioner was printed in letters of blood-red ink in their respective copies. Of the pomp with which this inquiry was conducted, and of the necessity for printing the details of it at the public cost, our readers may judge by the following deposition, which is made to occupy one entire page.

APPENDIX P.-Deposition of Mr. Thompson.

1. "Are you one of the warders of the Tower ?-I have been a warder in the Tower about seventeen years.

2. Did Mr. Bayley ever employ your son to copy for him?-Yes, he did; I do not recollect the time; it might have been nine months ago; I cannot say exactly.

3. Did your son ever copy for Mr. Bayley at your house?-He did, I believe ; for he had a book there.

4. Where is your house?-Upon the parade in the Tower,