Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/18

 muniment-rooms of Italian families of distinction, whose ancestors held high posts It would seem as if it had been the rule with those cunning men of former times to keep for their private use a copy of every important document connected with their official actions. But then these family collections are guarded for the most part with a jealousy hardly a whit less inexorable than that which until recently prevailed in regard to those of the State. In Rome, for instance, there are several family archives, about whose wealth in precious documents for the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there are traditions, but whereof no student—at least no foreign student—is allowed to see more than the outside. Yet even these family archives would hardly furnish the information for a full insight into the various incidents which marked Papal elections, and caused them to turn in favour of particular candidates. Every other historical event of the family ancestors would be illustrated rather than their doings in Conclave, because while in all other situations these stood more or less in the character of agents who could not avoid correspondence with their superiors, in Conclave every