Record Office

“ He will set down which Statutes are warranted by the Record, and which not. He will correct the printed Book by the Record. For which Purpose he requireth free Access at all Times to the Records in the Tower. Being very aged, viz. almost Fourscore, he desireth that for his Ease and better enabling in his Work, the Keeper of the Records within the Tower of London may every Day deliver unto him, when he shall so require, One Parliament Roll, to be by him and his Clerk perused and viewed, in a Lodging which he hath taken near unto the said Office ”

“ A Record Office is established at the Base, to carry on all office work in connection with the personnel from which it is desirable the units in the field should be entirely freed, such as the soldiers’ attestations and medical history sheets, and their accounts. ”

“ The publications of the Record Office are of three kinds: reports, lists and indexes, and calendars. The reports are the annual reports of the Deputy Keeper, and now deal merely with the administrative work of the office; up to 1889 they also contained, in the form of appendices, inventories and detailed descriptions of various classes of records. In the present article these reports are referred to by number. The lists and indexes are either inventories of special classes with more or less detail, or indexes to the contents of certain documents grouped for that purpose ”

“ As keeper of the rolls he gained the name of the 'father of record reform.' It was through his unremitting perseverance that the government at last consented to provide an adequate repository for the national records. In the House of Lords he abstained from party controversy as being inconsistent with is judicial office, and devoted his time there to the prosecution of legal reforms. ”

“ There are immense numbers of documents, some of them dating back to Norman and even earlier times, still in existence. The Record Office, in London, has many thousands of documents connected with the king's business; the borough towns and cities and the monasteries each had their own records, but most of these latter records disappeared in the sixteenth century; every old estate has such documents; and many of the old manors have still records going back many centuries. ”

“ In contradistinction those public documents which were issued in closed form under seal were known as “close letters,” litterae clausae.
Such public documents belong to the state archives of their several countries, and are the monuments of administrative and political and domestic history of a nation from one generation to another. In no country has so perfect a series been preserved as in our own. Into the Public Record Office in London have been brought together all the collections of state archives which were formerly stored in different official repositories of the kingdom. ”

“ When we find the authorities at the British Museum, and the Guildhall, and other repositories open to us, and giving every facility with their records, which, after all, embrace priceless treasures and quite as worthy of safe custody, the restrictions placed upon literary research by the Master of the Rolls and the Record Office officials is really worthy a Royal Commission of inquiry. ”

“ Out of this procedure was gradually developed the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery as a Court of Equity, and the growth may be traced by a careful study of the records which have been handed down to us.
The Chancery an office of the Parliament. As soon as the Great King's Court in one sense of the term—that of the Common Council of the Realm—began to take the name of Parliament, an office of that Parliament, for the custody of its records, was the Chancery; and in this way Parliament Rolls and Statute Rolls have come into the Public Record Office. ”

“ In the Record Office are two orders, one dated 18 Jan. 1518, by Lord Darcy to a servant, to deliver wethers and kids to Constable. They are curious as written on the backs of playing cards (Cal. Hen. VIII, vol. ii. app. 43) . ”

“ That the Parliament Office is the proper Repository for the Original Acts passed in this Realm; and that Transcripts of the said Acts, certified in due Form, ought to be in the Rolls Office, there to remain of Record. ”

“ With all our craze for accumulating files we do not record many telephone conversations. You must be the judge as to whether a record for your office is necessary, and in such exceptional cases state your wishes at the time. ”

“ On the filing of such notice with such clerk or register, it shall be the duty of such clerk or register to record same in the books used for recording deeds in the office of such clerk or register and to index the name of the person or persons to whom such notice is directed as a grantor in an index book to be kept by such clerk or register ”

“ Books and Manuscripts not of Record, containing Entries or Copies of Statutes, are very numerous. In the Court of Exchequer at Westminster are Three Books, marked IX. X. XI. Book X. contains many of the earlier Statutes previous to Edw. III: Books IX. XI. contain the Statutes from 1 Edw. III. to 7 Hen. VIII.
In the Town Clerk’s Office, at the Guildhall of the City of London, are several Manuscript Volumes ”

“ A central office, in which papers from all departments of the Government are lodged after they have passed out of current use, examined, classified, and filed by a staff familiar with their contents, need only be brought into use to become indispensably serviceable in the carrying on of public business; but in addition, the archivist, knowing the contents of the documents in his custody, is able to direct and help in a manner that can not otherwise be done, that portion of the public interested in the information contained in the Government archives. ”

“ I. in the Town Clerk’s Office, London.—Thirdly, In inserting the Stops or Points which Blackstone omitted, but which are justified by the Originals, and which are material to the Sense; and in avoiding many Errors, which had crept into all prior Editions, even that of Blackstone himself, in consequence of the Transcripts and Examinations being intrusted, at different Places, to different Persons not all equally competent to the Task, and from the Collation of unauthenticated Manuscript Copies supposed to be of a Date much more antient than in Truth they are. ”

“ Once a basic registration has been made in the Copyright Office for a work, that basic registration will ordinarily stand as the fundamental copyright record on which other, later records relating to the particular work can be built. ”

“ Original Charters of Inspeximus of these respective Dates, agreeing with the Entries on the Statute and Charter Rolls, are still in Existence. Of these Charters one of 25 Edw. I. confirming Magna Carta, is in the Town Clerk’s Office London. Others of 28 Ed. I. confirming Magna Carta are in the same Repository, as also in Durham Cathedral, Westminster Collegiate Church, Oriel College Oxford, and in the Town Clerk’s Office at Appleby in Westmoreland. Others of the same Date, confirming Carta de Foresta, are in Durham Cathedral, and Oriel College Oxford. ”

“ Upon the conclusion of a President's term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President. The Archivist shall have an affirmative duty to make such records available to the public as rapidly and completely as possible consistent with the provisions of this Act. ”

“ Greeting, Whereas the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, and Commissioners of Shires and Boroughs in Our Parliament of Great Britain assembled, having taken into their consideration the State of the Public Records of this Kingdom, and the necessity of providing for the better arrangement, preservation, and more convenient use of the same, have unto Us, that the Public Records of the Kingdom are in many Offices unarranged, undescribed, and unascertained; that many of them are exposed to erasure, alteration, and embezzlement, and are lodged in Buildings incommodious and insecure ”

“ The first care, therefore, of the custodian of records should be to preserve this connexion, where it exists. In the majority of countries a previous task awaits him; it has been his duty to collect and arrange his documents. There are few countries in which records have not passed through a period of neglect; each office of state has kept or rather neglected its own papers; each court of justice has been the keeper of its own records; the student has been paralysed by a multitude of repositories among which he vainly sought the documents he required. ”

“ Occasionally a grave clerk smiles sardonically at the ridiculous character of some of the articles which come to light; sometimes, perhaps, looks thoughtfully at a withered rosebud, or bunch of pressed violets, a homely little pin-cushion, or a book-mark, wishing it had reached its proper destination. I can not answer for other employees, who may not have even this amount of heart and imagination to invest in the dull business of a Government office ”

“ Claud. D II. in the British Museum, and M m. v. 19, in the Library of the University of Cambridge, several of the Instruments contained in the Manuscripts purport to be examined by the Roll. In Liber Horn, in the Town Clerk’s Office, London, several are marked as examined ‘per Ceram;’ ‘per Ceram Gildaule;’ ‘per Statutum Gildaule London in Cera;’ ‘cum brevi cum eisdem in Gildaula adjunct’ ”

“ It shall be the duty of the recorder to make and keep accurate records of all ordinances made by the city council, and of all their proceedings in their corporate capacity; which record shall at all times be open to the inspection of the electors of said city, and shall perform such other duties as may be required of him by the ordinances of the city council, and serve as clerk of the municipal court. ”

“ I propose to make a beginning by putting two capable men and a boy in an office, with instructions to cut out, preserve, and verify all contemporary records in the daily and weekly press that have a bearing upon any branch of our departments. ”

“ VI. “At the End of every Session of Parliament, all the Public Acts are ingrossed into one great Roll by Bowyer, as Clerk of the Parliament; and the same Roll, being by him subscribed, he delivereth into the Chapel of the Rolls; which is thereupon there received, and placed among the Records of the Chancery, being the highest Record of the Kingdom, without any other Warrant than his Hand: Which Acts or Statutes so by him transcribed, do bind his Majesty’s Subjects of all Degrees for ever. ”

“ As with all nineteenth-century history, the extent, the variety, and the intricacy of the various sources are simply overwhelming. The number of official records—Statutes, Orders, Circulars, Minutes, Reports, Letters, etc.—dealt with for the present small volume (although we have confined ourselves in the main to the publications of the Central Authority itself, and have not been able to consult the manuscript records and letter-books of more than a score of the Boards of Guardians) runs into, literally, tens of thousands. ”

“ These, with the legislature itself, are the departments of government in which our archives originate.
Archives we have defined as the records, the business papers, of the province having a permanent value. All archives need not be of historical value in the narrow sense. Public documents may have a business or record value apart from history, yet it would be hard to say that any given document might not be found useful in some way in connection with history. The main value of a document is as an evidence of truth. ”

“ A book should be kept in every office, in which should be entered the name and age of each Clerk or other officer, at the time of his appointment, the dates of his examination, first appointment, and subsequent promotions, together with notes of all the reports made upon him from time to time, either on the occasions afforded by the occurrence of vacancies, or at other times, in consequence of some special instance either of good or ill behaviour. ”

“ Every document does not contain truth, yet even such a document may, in effect, be a fact in history, and training and experience lead to a reasonably true interpretation.
The Ontario Bureau of Archives, organized in 1903, is equally related and attached to all the Government departments, and receives all papers and documents of record value or of historical interest, not in current use, from all branches of the public service. When possible, these documents are classified, calendared, and indexed. ”

“ State Papers.—This class contains the documents belonging to the offices of the secretaries of state, formerly deposited in the place of custody called the State Paper Office. This office was established about the year 1578, but the first attempt to arrange its contents seems to have been due to Sir Thomas Wilson, who in the reign of James I. divided the papers into two classes, Domestic and Foreign, to which at a later date the class of Colonial Papers was added. These. series all come to an end at the year 1782, at which date the modern history of the office of Secretary of State begins. ”

“ By s. 8 the king’s remembrancer is a master of the Supreme Court, and the office is usually filled by the senior master. The king’s remembrancer department of the central office is now amalgamated with the judgments and married women’s acknowledgments department. The king’s remembrancer still assists at certain ceremonial functions—relics of the former importance of the office—such as the nomination of sheriffs, the swearing-in of the lord mayor of London, the trial of the pyx and the acknowledgments of homage for crown lands. ”

“ There exist, however, masses of records where this path is now inaccessible; these have been formed by putting together records of a similar nature either in ignorance of their history or without regarding it; the justification of this course of action must be found in the special circumstances of each case. These collections are as follows:—
Ministers Accounts are the accounts of bailiffs, receivers, and other officers managing estates, including, first, those of the duchy of Lancaster; second, accounts of crown lands filed as vouchers in the King’s Remembrancer’s Office ”