Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/331

Rh RECORDS 313 of time it became a doubtful question whether lands were held by knight's service or by some other tenure, inquisi- tions were held and each baron had to return to the king an account of what he held. Such accounts comprise the early history of landed property, with the names of the owners and the extent of the estates. For information on this subject the three great authorities are the Black and Red Books of the Exchequer, the scutage rolls, and the subsidy rolls ; the Liber Niger Scaccarii, or Liber Niger Parvus as it is sometimes called, compiled by Gervase of Tilbury, nephew to Henry II., in the twenty-second year of that king's reign, is the most ancient of these. It contains a list of knights' fees of the time of Henry II., and in many of the returns there appear family names and par- ticulars of the parents, children, wives, and occupiers of the land as well as of tenants in capite. In this book there are also various treaties of the same king, four bulls of Pope Alexander III., and the constitution of the royal household during the reign of Henry II. The Red Book is somewhat similar to the Liber Niger, and contains among other entries the oaths of the different officers of the Court of Exchequer the Dialogus de Scaccario (for- merly ascribed to Gervase of Tilbury, but clearly proved by Madox to have been written by Richard FitzNigel, at one time treasurer of the Exchequer, who held the see of London from 1189 to 1198); numerous short memoranda, <fcc., for the instruction and use of the officials ; and collec- tions of knights' fees and serjeanties of the reigns of Henry II., Richard I., John, and Henry III. Many of its entries are also in the Black Book. The scutage rolls, which begin in the reign of Edward I., contain the pecuniary satisfaction paid by each knight in lieu of the personal attendance upon his sovereign that was required of him. This satis- faction was called "scutagium" or "servitium scuti" (service of the shield), and in Norman-French "escuage," from ecu, a shield. The assessment was, however, so arbitrary that it was decreed by Magna Charta that no scutage should be imposed without consent of parliament. The subsidy rolls record the fifteenths and tenths, &c., granted by parliament to the crown. In addition to the above are the marshals' rolls, which contain an account of the military service due from great tenants to the king on the eve of a war, the " testa de Nevil," and the solitary roll called the constable's roll. Among the more important documents belonging to the ancient Exchequer collection, concerning which space forbids us to particularize, are the records of the Augmenta- tion Court, full of valuable matter to the church historian, the court rolls of manors possessed by the crown, the volu- minous series of bills and answers, the collection of special commissions, the golden bull of Clement VII. conferring the title of " Defender of the Faith " upon Henry VIII., hearth-money accounts, the Jews' rolls, the vast collection of crown leases, the recusant rolls, and the very curious wardrobe accounts. Obsolete Courts. In addition to the various records which have been alluded to belonging to the Courts of Chancery, Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, there is a large class of documents which appertain to obsolete courts, and many of which are of great historical value. The most important of this class are the archives belonging to the Star Chamber, the Court of Chivalry, the Court of Requests, the Court of Wards and Liveries, and the Marshals Court. The muniments of the duchy of Lancaster and also those of the abolished courts of the palatinate of Durham are now among the archives of the Record Office. An account of Domesday Book has already been given (see DOMESDAY BOOK). The amal- gamation of the State Paper Office in 1854 with the Record Office has been the means of rendering the series of the English national archives an almost complete collection. With the exception of certain manuscripts in the British Museum and in a few public libraries, most of the public muniments of the realm are now placed in one repository and under the supervision of the master of the rolls. Upon the subject of the public records Sir Francis Palgrave, under whose auspices as deputy keeper the public muniments were brought together under one roof, writes as follows : "Whether we consider them in relation to antiquity, to con- tinuity, to variety, to extent, or to amplitude of facts and details they have no equals in the civilized world. For the archives of France, the most perfect and complete in Continental Europe, do not ascend higher than the reign of St Louis, and compared with ours are stinted and jejune ; whereas in England, taking up our title (so to speak) from Domesday, the documents placed under the custody of the master of the rolls contain the whole of the materials for the history of this country in every branch and under every aspect, civil, religious, political, social, moral, or material from the Norman Conquest to the present day." History. In consequence of the neglect and indifference from which the national archives suffered before being housed in their present quarters, it is as much a matter for wonder as for congra- tulation that any of them are still in existence. In the earlier periods the records of the courts were preserved in the palace of the king ; but, when the law courts became stationary and were held within the precincts of the royal palace, instead of following the sovereign from place to place, all legal documents remained in the custody of their respective courts. On the business of the country increasing, the records began to assume such vast propor- tions that further accommodation had to be obtained. Gradually three warehouses for the custody of public documents came into existence. The records of the King's Bench and Common Pleas were removed to the palace at Westminster, to the old chapter- house, and to the cloister of the abbey of Westminster, and thus laid the foundation of the well-known "chapter -house repository." Towards the end of the reign of Richard I., the Court of Chancery becoming separated from that of the Exchequer, the wardrobe in the Tower of London was used as the chief place of deposit for all Chancery documents, and thus the Record Office in the Tower sprang up. It had been the custom of the earlier masters of the rolls to keep the records of their courts in their private houses ; but after the reign of Edward IV. these documents were lodged in what is now styled the " chapel of the rolls, " but which was then known as the " domus conversorum Judaeorum, " or the house for converted Jews and infidels, which had been annexed to the office of the master of the rolls in the reign of Edward III. ; an office was subsequently attached to the chapel, and thus arose the record depository known as the "rolls chapel office." For many years these three places of deposit the chapter-house, the Tower, and the rolls chapel office constituted the chief repositories for public records ; but, as the accommodation that these buildings offered was limited, rooms in private houses, vacant vaults, and even stables had to be taken by the ministers of the day for the storing of the ever-increasing archives. Little care was, how- ever, paid to the preservation of the parchments. They were put into houses and forgotten ; their various removals were most care- lessly superintended ; and they were often left a prey to the pilfer- ings of the curious. Now and again a sovereign or a secretary of state turned his attention to the disgraceful condition in which the muniments of the kingdom were preserved and a sweeping reform was announced ; but more important matters always appear to have shelved the subject. In 1567 Queen Elizabeth was informed of the confused and perilous state of the records of her parliament and her chancery, and orders were given for rooms to be prepared in the Tower for the reception of these parchments, Her Majesty declaring that ' ' it was not meet that the records of her chancery, which were accounted as a principal measure of the treasure belong- ing to herself and to her crown and realm, should remain in private houses and places for doubt of such danger and spoil as theretofore had happened to the like records in the time of Richard II. and Henry VI." This order was, however, never ex'ecuted. On the accession of Charles II., William Prynne, then keeper of the records in the Tower, implored the king "to preserve these ancient records not only from fire and sword, but water, moths, canker, dust, cob- webs, for your own and your kingdom's honour and service, they being such sacred reliques, such peerless jewels that your noble ancestors have estimated no places so fit to preserve them in as consecrated chapels or royal treasuries and wardrobes where they lay up their sacred crowns, jewels, robes ; and that upon very good grounds, they being the principal evidences by which they held, supported, defended their crowns, kingdoms, revenues, prerogatives, and their subjects, their respective lands, lives, liberties, properties, franchises, rights, laws." This earnest appeal was not urged before it was required. On his appointment to office Prynne made an inspection of the records under his custody. He found them XX. 40