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A MANUAL OF ARCHIVE ADMINISTRATION
A
MANUAL
OF
ARCHIVE ADMINISTRATION
by HILARY JENKINSON
sometime Scholar of Pembroke College and
F. W. Maitland Lecturer in the University of Cambridge:
Reader in Diplomatic and English Archives
in the University of London
NEW AND REVISED EDITION
LONDON
PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES & GO LTD
12 BEDFORD SQUARE, W.C.I
1 937
First Edition published 1922 New and Revised Edition published 1937
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES & CO. LTD.
LONDON & BRADFORD
v
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
When I first decided to put in hand a new edition of this Manual I was under the impression that the task would be a very light one. I did not intend (as indeed I have not attempted) to do more than I did in 1922 ; that is, to illustrate the theory and practice of Archive Work from English Archives : I had not changed, so far as I knew, my views upon matters of principle : and for the rest it did not occur to me that after the lapse of a comparatively small amount of time I should need to do more than revise a few references and re-write a few paragraphs. Actually, though the first part of my assumption has proved correct — I do not find myself in disagreement with my former exposition of Archive Theory — I now know that I much under-estimated the number of small practical matters upon which I should wish to give the result of greater know- ledge : I had had what is, I suppose, the common experience of a man engaged in work which progresses only by slow stages — that of not realizing, till circumstances compel him to take stock, how much progress has been made.1
I should not have thought it worth while to mention this if my personal experience had not chanced to coincide with a period — roughly the period since the Great War — during which appreciation of the value of Archives, and organized effort for their better control and maintenance, have increased to an unparalleled extent both in Europe and America generally and in England in particular. I can make no pretence to deal thoroughly here with these developments (it would need a small treatise) but it may be worth while to glance at a few outstanding matters.
1 I find that since 1922, when I was first charged with the superintendence of a Repair Department, something like 50,000 Archive pieces, many of them containing large numbers of individual documents, have passed through it. I might have known that this could hardly happen without a considerable enlargement of view. Actually we have in that time evolved what amounts to a new technique in more than one department of the work. A similar remark might be made in regard to other divisions of Archive work with which I have been personally in touch : and I have, of course, profited largely by the accumulated experience of many colleagues at the Public Record Office and friends in this and other Countries.
VI
PREFACE
One has, in fact, only to look at any periodical summary of Archive progress, such as the Year's Work in Archives which is now compiled by the British Records Association,1 to see that progress on an important scale is continuous everywhere and in relation to every department of Archive work : each year we hear of new Archive Laws or the re-organization of existing establishments ; 2 of new Buildings or the adaptation of old ones to new usefulness as Repositories ; 3 of the working of international agreements 4 touching Archives affected by political changes and the re-integration of ancient fonds long dismembered ; 5 of the enlargement of the scope of the Archivist's work to cover new fields ; 6 of fresh progress in the production of volumes in existing series of Archive publications and the initiation of new ones ; 7 of technical research in
1 Published by the Library Association in its Year's Work volume and separately by the Records Association in its Reprints series. I have taken most of the illustrations which follow from the issues of 1935 and 1936.
In this connexion I should not omit mention of at least two Continental Publications — the German Archivalische Zeitschrift and the Italian Archivi d' Italia: Rassegna Internazionale degli Archivi. In many other countries there are now specialist publications devoted to Archive work, though generally their interests are mainly national.
2 For example very important new Laws, increasing the powers both of Provincial and State Archivists in relation to Public Departments, came into force in France in 1936 : a new Decree of 1935 has superseded in Italy the old regolamento of 191 1 : in Germany the re-organization of the Reichsarchiv in 1934 has been, or is being, followed by other important legislation : and many other examples could be cited. Little is known at present, outside Russia, of the results of Archive organization, or re-organization » in that country : but they should be full of interest.
3 The number which might be cited is embarrassingly large but perhaps the most important is the rehabilitation of the Hotel de Rohan at Paris as a Repository, and the connexion established between this and the Hotel Soubise. In 1936 occupation of new premises was reported from Rome and from ten other Italian Archive Centres.
4 Notably that between Germany and Denmark concerning the Schleswig-Holstein Archives ; dealing with a situation which dates back to the Treaty of Vienna, in 1878.
5 The outstanding example comes, of course, from Poland.
6 The incorporation of Notarial Minutiers in the Archives Nationales at Paris is particularly important : similar work has been going on in Italy for some years ; and was in progress (until recent lamentable events) in Spain, as the result of a decree of 1931.
7 This is much too large a subject for the citation of representative examples : but anything in the nature of a new general Guide is important, and in this connexion the new French Etat General des Inventaires des Archives . . . may be cited.
PREFACE vii
regard to the materials and conservation of documents ; * of experiments in Archive Education — education of the Archivist himself by means of special schools 2 and of the Public by Exhibitions and by increased facilities for research.3 Perhaps the most striking milestone in the progress of Archive work in recent years, from a national point of view, is the triumphant institution, after more than fifty years of struggle, of a National Archives of the United States Government,4 its organization upon lines which profit by the trial and error of a century in Europe, and its establishment in a building which must be the object of envy to every Archivist under older dispensations. While as an evidence of the international importance to which our subject has now attained it is only necessary to record that in recent years a Committee of the League of Nations has found it both desirable and possible to compile and issue a Guide International des Archives ; 6 drawing for the purpose information from the Archive Establishments of thirty-six European Countries.
A growth which is no less remarkable, though of course on a smaller scale, has been witnessed in England during the same period. It is no exaggeration to say that, at the time this book appeared, there were still many persons concerned with Record work for whom their subject began and ended with the Public Records ; who would not allow much importance to any classes even of those, apart from the Chancery Enrolments,
1 See the replies of several Countries {e.g. Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Russia) to the last part of the questionnaire issued for the Guide International mentioned below.
2 As an interesting local manifestation may be mentioned the Instructional Courses for 62 ' District Wardens ' of Archives in Wiirtemberg. Larger and more national (or international) in scope is the Inter- Scandinavian Archive Day, in which Denmark, Esthonia, Finland, Norway and Sweden participate.
3 What is, perhaps, a curious comment on recent political happenings is the official assistance now given in many German Repositories to genealogical researches. In general, increased facilities for students and an opening up of Archives have been a post- War feature in most Countries.
A See some description of this in B.R.A. Reprints, No. 5 : 14,000,000 dollars have been expended on the new buildings at Washington.
5 Published by the Institut International de Cooperation Intellectuelle in 1935.
viii PREFACE
the State Papers, and a few others; and for whom the needs of the Student meant only the needs of Family History or Topo- graphy. If the suggestion had been made to them that for the Archivist all classes of documents in his custody must from certain points of view be said to have an equal value, they would certainly have considered that the person who put it forward was trying to gain a cheap reputation by the use of paradox : and to talk of Archive Science in such company was to run the risk of being thought rather silly. Outside the Public Record Office, though a number of official Reports * had drawn attention to the quantity, nature and importance of our Local Records, there were not more than two or three Local Authorities which had yet even considered the desirability of making special provision for the organization and mainten- ance of an Archive department : and after fifty years of demonstration, in the publications of the Historical MSS. Commission, of the quality and quantity of Private Collections in this Country local enthusiasts were still struggling with little success in most neighbourhoods to obtain that first requisite — a Local Repository where they could find housing and custody for documentary collections in danger of dispersal or destruction.2 It is true that the local Record-printing Societies, in which this Country has long been particularly rich,3 were educating public opinion in the value of private and local collections, had succeeded in interesting the Public Libraries, and in one or two cases had established Repositories at their own head-quarters : but it is true also to say that the lack of Local Archive Centres and of Archivists was almost complete.
1 One of so early a date as 1801 : see the summary of its predecessors' work in the Third Report (1919) of the Royal Commission (1910) on Public Records.
2 See on this point below pp. 38 seqq.
3 Something like 300 Societies whose publications are of interest to Historians were listed in Supplement No. 1 to the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research in 1930 ; and of these a large proportion undertake a certain amount of Record publication. In 1934 when the British Records Association organised an Exhibition of Record Publications issued in this way it was able to shew, for a period of five years only, 360 volumes.
PREFACE ix
The first step towards rilling the second of these gaps was made when the Library Association included Palaeography and Archive Science in the schedule of subjects for its diploma ; and soon after a School of Librarianship came into existence in London University which made these subjects part of its regular curriculum.1 The service thus done by Librarians to Archive Science in England can hardly be exaggerated : they have the credit of being the first body to recognize the existence of the subject and make provision for its teaching. To describe all the other developments which have taken place during the period under review would again be too long a task : but I will venture to single out five events as representing well-marked stages of growth.
(i) The publication (igig) of the 6 Third Report ' of the Royal Commission (igio) on Public Records.
This Report dealt with Local Records and though the demands made by the Commission were, in the judgement of some, too sweeping, they have been the starting point for much that has been done since : and the Appendices to their Report assemble a very large amount of valuable information. (ii) The opening (ig2i) of the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London.
This may be taken as marking the recognition of research
upon documents, and particularly Archives, as in general
an essential part of English graduate work in Medieval
and Modern History.
(iii) The issue (ig2j, ig24) of the present edition of the ' Guide to
the . . . Public Record Office,' by Mr. M. S. Giuseppi.
I have dealt in Appendix I with this subject : the im- portant point is that for the first time the Public Records were described officially on the basis of structure, not subject interest. Parallel to this was the preparation of a complete Catalogue of Official Means of Reference to the Records, arranged on the same plan : and it was followed (1933) by a new ' Summary of Records,' also in a parallel arrangement
1 The present Manual was partly written as a text-book for Students of that School.
x PREFACE
and with a complete set of numerical references to all classes. Other new pieces of organization which will be described below 1 are likewise in close relation to this development.
(iv) The Amendment (1924) to Lord Birkenhead's Act of 1922. This Act, by abolishing copy-hold tenure, had destroyed the practical utility of Manorial Court Rolls : and fears were entertained for their safety. The Amendment, which put them under the charge and superintendence of the Master of the Rolls, set up for the first time a direct connexion between the Head of the Central Archive Establishment (the Public Record Office) and Local Records. Incidentally, it led to his official recognition of Local Repositories for every County in England ; whose work of conservation is already extending far beyond Manorial collections.2
(v) The foundation {1932) of the British Records Association. This body, whose aim is to co-ordinate the work of all Institutions and Individuals interested in work upon Archives from any angle, has been so far very successful in enlisting the support of Local Authorities and other Institutions of all kinds ; and if it continues should ultimately be able to furnish on a voluntary basis something like the national organization of Archive work which in other Countries is statutorily provided.
It would be unwise to be too optimistic : we in England have a long way yet to go in arousing the interest of all Archive- owning Institutions, in assuring the creation of the necessary Repository space and the supply of trained Archivists, and in preventing meanwhile the destruction of documents. But undoubtedly we are at the moment on a rising tide of popular appreciation and general understanding of the value of Archives and of the existence of a special branch of learning dedicated to them. I hope I shall not be found presumptuous if I say that
1 See pages 133-135.
2 These Repositories are provided by Institutions of the most varied description — Archaeological and Historical Societies, Museums, Libraries and Local Authorities. The extent to which the last named, especially County Councils, are now opening their Muniment Rooms to non-official documents is both striking and symptomatic.
PREFACE xi
I have thought it worth while in these circumstances to keep in circulation what happens to be the only general treatise on the subject in English.
The changes which I have found it necessary to make should prevent any suspicion that I think I, or anyone else, can say the last word (save in the matter of principle) about what I know to be a developing science. My original plan was to reproduce most of the first edition photographically ; and though this has been abandoned the work retains its original form. On the other hand small changes have been made on every other page ; and certain parts have been re-written at much greater length — notably those dealing with the physical care of Archives (housing, repair, make-up, etc.) ; x those regarding arrangement and references ; 2 those concerning listing, calendaring, etc.; 3 the passages touching materials and documentary forms ; 4 and the Appendix on Classifica- tion.5 I would also call attention to new matter regarding the Archivist's own Registers,6 the question of Archive Quality,7 and the Enemies of Archives.8
I have even more need now than in 1922 to acknowledge the help of colleagues and friends too numerous for individual mention : but I should like to associate still with my book the names of three former colleagues — Mr. M. S. Giuseppi, Mr. Charles Johnson and the late C. G. Crump. I should like also to add some tribute to the now considerable number of students — Librarians, Archivists and Historians — who have attended classes of mine and whose questions and interest have done more than they knew (but not more than I gratefully acknowledge) to direct my own enquiries.
HILARY JENKINSON.
Chelsea, 1937.
1 Pp. 45-83 and App. III. 2 Pp. 115-117 and 121-123.
8 Pp. 125-132. 4 Pp. 157-165. 6 Appendix I.
•Pp. 133-135. 7Pp-i54>i55- 8 Appendix IV.
TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I
INTRODUCTORY
PAGE
i. General Introduction ....•••• I
2. What are Archives ? ,.,»,."." 2
(a) The Official Character — (b) The Circumstances of Writing —
(c) A Definition of Documents — (d) Archives Public and Private — (e) When Documents become Archives — (/) Custody.
3. Definition of Archives • .11
4. Archive Quality and the Historical Criticism of Archives . .11
5. The Duties of the Archivist J5
6. Illustration from English Archives 10
7. Standardization of Method . . • '„,.'«,' !?
8 The original appearance and present reproduction of this Book 20
9. A new Problem : the Making of the Archives of the Future . 21
10. Summarizing ....••••• 22
PART II
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHIVES AND RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING
1. The Evolution of Archives . . . • • • 23 (a) Primary Division of Archives — (b) Earliest Archives : the File
— (c) Differentiation — (d) Differentiation, continued — (e) The varying careers of Archive Classes — (/) Differentiation of Archive Classes and the redistribution of duties among personnel — (g) Archives Ancient and Modern, Public and Private — (h) Order of Differentiation — (i) The Hands of former Archivists.
2. Transmission of Archives : the Question of Custody . • 32 (a) Where the Administration which produced the Archives con- tinues to function — (b) Where a new Administration carries on
the same Functions — (c) Where the Function ceases but the Administration goes on — (d) Where both Administration and Function cease — (e) Mixed cases — (f) Custody : what is a Responsible Person ?
3. What is an Archivist ? . . • • • • • -3°
4. Archives and Museums. . . • • • • • 41
5. The Primary Duties of an Archivist :
(i) Physical Defence of Archives -44
(a) The Repository — (b) The Repository, continued — (c) The Repository : Provision of Accommodation for Students —
xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
(d) The Repository : General Plan — (e) The Repository : Internal Fitting and Packing — (/) The Make-up of Documents : Rolls ; Outsize Documents ; Loose Documents ; Volumes — (g) Handling and Damage — (h) Theft — (i) Misplacing — (j) Labels — (k) Repairs : Principles and Rules of Work ; Materials ; Methods of repairing Parchment and Paper — (/) Binding — (m) Seals — (n) Artificial Aids to Reading — (o) Special Dangers — (p) Archive Museums and Safe Rooms.
6. Primary Duties of the Archivist : (ii) Moral Defence of Archives 83 (a) Introductory — (b) Reception : Old Numeration and Lists :
Order of Arrival — (c) Accession Numbers — (d) Original or early Files, &c. — (e) Stamping and Numbering : Methods and Rules — (f) Stamping and Numbering : the Accessions Register — (g) Stamping and Numbering : the Single Docu- ment ; the File or Volume ; the Enclosure, Schedule, or Insertion — (h) First Packing — (i) The Alteration of References
— (j) The Archivist's Notes — (k) Archive Arrangement : its Object — (/) Arrangement : Chief Principle — (m) Arrange- ment : Procedure — (n) Arrangement : Slip-making — (0) Arrangement : the Vertical Divisions of Archives — (p) The 1 Fonds ' or Archive Group : Definition — (q) Where one series of Archives is divided between two Archive Groups — (r) Arrangement within the Archive Group : accepted theories and some difficulties — (s) Arrangement : another suggestion
— (t) Arrangement : Class Headings — (u) Old Series, New Series, and Miscellanea — (v) The case of Archives misplaced or never arranged — (w) The Making of the Inventory — (x) Final Packing and Numeration — (y) The Making of the Inventory, continued — (z) Deposited Collections and Tran- scripts — (ad) Repository Lists — (bb) Catalogue of Indexes, etc.
7. The Archivist, the Administrator, and the Historian. . . 123
8. Secondary Duties of the Archivist. . . . . 125 (a) The Guide — (b) Various Means of Reference to Archives —
(c) The Archivist and the Editor — (d) The List — (e) The Descriptive List — (f) The Descriptive List, continued — (g) The Transcript, Calendar, etc. — (h) Conclusion.
9. References to Archives printed or used by Students . . .132 10. The Archivist's own Registers . . . . . 133
PART III
MODERN ARCHIVES
1. Introductory: old Archives and new Tendencies . . .136
2. The General Practice with regard to Selection and Destruction . 138
3. Destruction : Grounds and Justification alleged . . 139
TABLE OF CONTENTS
xv
4. Destruction : the usual methods of selection for this purpose (a) Word for Word Duplicates — (b) Museum Specimens and Composite Classes — (c) Sense Duplicates — (d) Documents not considered to be of sufficient value to justify their preservation
Destruction of Ancient Archives : who is to be responsible for it Present provision for Destruction ; and the Future of Archives The Selection of Modern Archives . Summarizing .... 9. The work of the Archive Maker
10. The Golden Rule of Archive Making
1 1 . Conclusion .....
PAGE
140
145
149 152
J52
154
PART IV ARCHIVE MAKING
1. Introductory . . . . . . . . -156
2. Materials, Old and New . . . . . . .157
(a) Paper — (b) Paper, continued : recent Reports — (c) Paper,
continued : Control of Use — (d) Inks — (e) Paints — (f) Typewriters — (g) Pencils — (h) Paper-fasteners — (t) Packing Materials and Methods — (j) New Materials — (k) New Forms.
3. New Methods of doing Business ; and their Appearance in Archives (a) Conversations and Telephone Messages — (b) Copies of Dictated
Letters and Telegrams — (c) Personal Letters — (d) General Results of the New Methods.
4. Indexes ..........
5. Over-production of Documents ......
6. A Remedy : Re-introduction of Control ....
7. New Functions of the Registry ......
(a) Materials — (b) Methods employed — (c) Preservation and
Destruction.
8. The Records of the Registry itself ......
(a) Accession of Documents — (b) Placing Documents and con- necting them with others — (c) Description of Documents : Subject — (d) Description of Documents : Nature — (e) Distri- bution of Documents in the Office — (/) The Resulting Register : and Subsidiary Documents.
9. Minutes and Accounts . . . . . . . .177
0. The Use of the Register . . . . . . .178
(a) Documents which may be destroyed immediately — (b) Cases reserved — (c) The Routine of Destruction — (d) Cases for Further Consideration — (e) Final disposal — (/) The limit of Current Use and the passing of Documents into Archives.
166
169 170 170 171
73
xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
1 1 . Classes of Documents not registered ; and some other con- siderations . . . . . . . . .184
(a) Minutes, Proceedings, and Accounts — (b) Separate Treatment of * Annexed ' Documents — (c) Confidential Documents — (d) Indexes and Subsidiary Documents of Registry.
12. The Staffing and Organization of Registry .... 187
13. Registry and the Archivist . . . . . . .189
14. Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . .190
APPENDICES
I. The Classification of Archives, with some mention of the
Documentary Classes cited in this book . . . . 191
II. Sketch for a Bibliography of Archive Science . . . 198
III. Specifications: 205 (a) Racking and Shelving — (b) Boxes — (c) Trays to contain
Fragile Documents — (d) Folders and Portfolios — (e) Filing Press and File Boards — (f) Repair of Bindings.
IV. Some Enemies of Manuscripts . . . . . .218
V. Archive History: An Illustration ..... 224
i. Archive History of the Exchequer of Receipt, ii. Chart to illustrate Development of Periods of Issue.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Two works very frequently quoted in this Book are — Muller, S. ; Feith, J. A. ; and Fruin, R. Handleiding voor het ordenen en beschrijven van Archieven . . . (Groningen : 1898) : quoted in the French Edition Manuel pour V arrangement et la description des Archives
. . . (La Haye : 19 10); and
Royal Commission on Public Records (1910) First, Second, and Third Reports (London : 1912, 19 14, 1919)-
The first has been cited throughout as Muller, Feith and Fruin ; the second is also abbreviated where there is no possibility of confusion.
PART I
INTRODUCTORY
§ i. General Introduction
It is hardly necessary to say that History, as it is understood now, has become very largely dependent on Archives. New varieties have been added to it, Personal Narrative or Political History making way to some extent for Constitutional History, Legal History, Economic and Social History, and finally Administrative History ; 1 and it is possible that there may be others to come. This growth of scope has resulted largely from the opening up of new material and new possibilities by the recognition, especially towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, of the value of Archive sources, and by the gradual process of making them available — physically available to those who can spend time in Archive Repositories and Muniment Rooms and available to all the world by printed List, Index, and Calendar. Pre- served oral tradition, contemporary narrative, comment and criticism, personal memoirs, official or semi-official compilations — these will no doubt continue to hold a position, often very important, among the sources upon which the ultimate his- torian draws for his final synthesis of the facts about any given period, movement, crisis, or relation. But it is more than doubtful if any authoritative historical work will ever again be published without copious notes referring to verifiable manu- script sources ; and it has become a recognized fact that such a work must be preceded by and dependent on the cumulative
1 At the time this book was written, the first two out of six volumes of the late Professor Tout's Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England had just been published — a marked stage in the development of the subject. Scattered studies on individual aspects of it are now exceedingly numerous: see for example Mr. A. B. Steel's Bibliography of about 150 concerning the medieval Exchequer, in American Historical Review, XXXIV (1929).
2 INTRODUCTORY part i
effect of a quantity of studies by other hands x in which settled opinion upon comparatively small points is based upon the laborious examination and analysis of details in Archives.
If this is so it is clear that some of us should be concerned with the keeping of the Archives of the past and perhaps with the making of the Archives of the future.
§ 2. What are Archives ?
We are faced at once with the necessity of choosing a nomenclature and fixing a definition. With regard to the name, we have a choice between Records and Archives. The first of these is highly technical and narrow in its correct sense 2 and exceedingly loose in its ordinary usage. There is little doubt that we must adopt the second — Archives* — which has the advantage of being common to many languages. Yet this too rather lacks preciseness in its ordinary use : no less an authority than the Director of the French Archives Nationales has used 4 the word as excluding among ancient documents only ' les ceuvres historiques, scientifiques et litteraires, qui ont leur place, non dans les archives, mais dans les bibliotheques ' ; and another distinguished French author makes the difference between Archives and documents mainly a matter of the
1 ' The great man when he conies may fling a footnote of gratitude to those who have smoothed his way, who have saved his eyes and his time ' : F. W. Maitland on the spade-work of history, quoted in H. A. L. Fisher's Biographical Sketch, p. 36.
2 ' An authentick and uncontravertable testimony in writing contained in rolls of parchment and preserved in Courts of Record,' is a typical definition. With this may be compared the carefully observed distinction (see below, App. V(i) (k)) between the Clerk of the Pells who recorded at the Exchequer of Receipt and the Auditor of the same Department who merely entered : this though the documents kept by the two might be duplicates. See also the statement made in the eighteenth century that an Office copy could not be made at the Treasury of the Receipt from the Archives of the Mint because these were not Records (Sir F. Palgrave, Antient Inventories and Kalendars . . . (1836), vol. i, p. cxi).
3 The use of the word has a respectable antiquity in England : for example — Sir Thomas Smyth, De Republica Anglie (London, 1583), p. 53, calls the Master of the Rolls Custos Archiuorum Regis.
4 Langlois et Stein, Les Archives de VHistoire de France, p. 1. Cf. the same author's definition in the Revue Internationale des Archives, des Bibliotheques et des Musees (1895-6), Part I, p. 7 : ' depots de titres et de documents authentiques de toute espece qui inte>essent un fitat, une province, une ville . . . ', &c.
§2 WHAT ARE ARCHIVES? 3
subject dealt with.1 The Oxford English Dictionary, while deriving the word from the Greek apxeiov, which is explained as meaning a magisterial residence or public office, gives the meanings of the English word as ( 1 ) a place in which public records or other historic documents are kept; and (2) a historic record or document so preserved. Here the absence of any distinction between a ' historic record ' and a ' document ' does not appear to be altogether supported by the quotations given, and in any case we are rather left where we were in our quest for a definition. We shall perhaps do best, keeping the deriva- tion of the word in mind, to make one for ourselves by com- paring in some well-known case documents which are obviously Archives with others which are obviously not.
Thus in 1914 England broke off relations with Germany. The Historian of the future who desires to write an account of that historic fact will, we may assume, examine the written information contained in various apxeLa-> m tne offices, in fact, of the various Public Departments of the time. He will find that he can draw from the collections preserved for its own reference by the Foreign Office the official copies of the Treaties which had at various times been made between the nations concerned ; from the same source he will obtain the correspon- dence that had passed between Ambassadors and Secretaries of State ; the Admiralty and War Office will furnish Accounts, Reports, Returns and Copies of Orders and Memoranda accu- mulated in preparation for a possible war ; contemporary police arrangements will be revealed by a study of papers from the Home Office. These and their like are clearly Archive authorities for that historic fact, the Outbreak of War ; and the quality common to all of them is that they are actual material parts of the administrative and executive transactions connected with it. The historian, coming afterwards, may examine, interpret, analyse, and arrange them for the purposes
1 A. Lelong, article on Archives in the Repertoire General alphabetique du Droit Francois (1889) vol. v, chap. 1 : cf. 3, § 4. Monsieur Joseph Cuvelier, in his Role des Archives (Brussels, 191 1), instances other definitions, all very loose and all different: and Signor Eugenio Casanova in Archivistica (Siena, 1928) has contributed a new, specially Italian, version.
4 INTRODUCTORY part i
of his treatise : they themselves state no opinion, voice no conjecture ; they are simply written memorials, authenticated by the fact of their official preservation, of events which actually occurred and of which they themselves formed a part.
The Reports, more or less unofficial, of speeches which com- mented on the situation in the House of Commons, the leaders in The Times, the official communiques set out in the Press, the memoirs of the German Chancellor — these are supple- mentary evidences, possibly valuable ; but they are not in any primary sense Archives.
On the one hand, therefore, we have documents which are material survivals of certain administrative or executive transactions in the past, preserved for their own reference by the responsible persons concerned : first-hand evidence, because they form an actual part of the corpus, of the facts of the case. On the other hand we have statements and expressions of opinion by persons who may, or may not, have been capable reasoners, in a position to know the facts, and unprejudiced. It is clear that if enough of the first class of these evidences survive and if he be able to appreciate their significance the Historian will have in them material for an exact statement of the historic facts. Given the opportunity he will probably use both classes because he will want to know not only the facts but the circumstances of the case ; but the first is indispensable.
(a) The Official Character, We have thus reached the first stage of our definition. Archives are documents which formed part of an official transaction and were preserved for official reference.
(b) The circumstances of writing. But now let us take a step farther. We excluded from the ranks of the Archives a copy of The Times. But this is not to say that The Times or any other written or printed expression of opinion may not under certain circumstances be included among Archives. For example, we may imagine a copy of The Times filed in the Foreign Office, with a note that the Secretary of State wishes copies (with or without correction) to be dispatched with covering letter to certain British Ambassadors : such a copy
§2 WHAT ARE ARCHIVES? 5
would of course form an evidence of the activities of the Foreign Office in a certain direction.1 It would seem, therefore, that our definition must include both documents specially made for, and documents included in,2 an official transaction.
(c) A definition of Documents. It will be noticed that printed matter has become, incidentally, included among our Archives. The fact is that in modern times the word document, which we use in default of a better, is very difficult to define ; and at any time the line between Documents and what are known in English Law as Exhibits 3 is an uneasy one to draw. Thus we cannot say that a document is something which gives information in writing ; for the Record Office series of Port Books gives us examples where the mere formal title, or other identification mark on the cover, converts an absolutely blank book into a perfectly good Archive :4 we cannot rule that to come into our purview a piece of printed matter must have some MS. added or attached ; for the official copies of printed 'Acts ' among the Records of the Colonial Office (not to speak of printed Proclamations 5 among the State Papers) are equally authenticated by the absence as by the addition of MS. com- ments. Again there is a case where an undoubted Archive consists of an old pair of military epaulettes ; and among
1 The distinction between the ordinary copy of the paper and one thus preserved in Foreign Office Archives may be seen if we imagine the comment of the Historian : ' the direction taken by popular feeling is clearly shown in an article which appeared in The Times on this date . . . that the Government was anxious to take full advantage of this is evidenced by the fact that the Foreign Secretary thought it worth while to forward a copy . . . '.
2 We need hardly say that these partake of the character of Archives only as from the time when official use was made of them. Thus a document may be itself of the twelfth century but as an Archive date from the twentieth : cf. below (pp. 102, 115) Part II, § 6 (q) and (x).
3 The word Exhibit itself originally refers to documents, and the Oxford Dictionary, which quotes a use in this sense in 1626 (cf. its use in a statute of 14 Charles II), can only produce a quotation of 1888 for its use in the sense of material objects other than writings.
4 K. R., Port Books : these blank books are a substitute for the more usual ' nil return '.
5 For example those which occur among the State Papers Henry VIII in the Record Office, many of which are known in unofficial copies in private collections such as that of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres.
6 INTRODUCTORY part i
enclosures to letters, forming in each case an integral part of the document, the writer can recall portraits and other pictures, maps,1 human hair, whip-cord (part of a cat-o'-nine-tails), a penny piece inscribed with disloyal sentiments and a packet of strange powder destined to cure cancer. The line between what is and what is not, by a little writing added or attached to it, converted into a document is one so difficult to draw, and the question of separating enclosed objects from the document to which they belong raises so many difficulties and objections, that probably our best course is to be dogmatic ; including under ' Documents ' for the purposes of our definition (i. e. as things admissible to the class of Archives) all manuscript in whatever materials 2 made, all script produced by writing machines, and all script mechanically reproduced 3 by means of type, type- blocks and engraved plates or blocks :A adding to these all other material evidences, whether or no they include alphabetical or numerical signs, which form part of or are annexed to, or may be
1 Maps or Plans are among the most usual things enclosed in or annexed to docu- ments, and examples might be cited from many classes of Public Records both ancient and modern, but especially such Archives as those of the Colonial Office and Treasury and the State Papers. To give only one instance, examples of printed maps of America, dated 1763, which have been applied to special uses and now form part of the Archives of the Treasury, will be found in T. 1/476.
2 The Public Record Office collections alone oblige us to include parchment, vellum, paper, paper- and card-boards, leather of various kinds, wood, and varieties of woven material.
3 For some notes upon the entry of printed matter into Administrative use in England see a paper on English Current Writing and Early Printing in the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society for 191 5.
4 Examples of Archives in type have already been given. Type-block is the term usually employed of printed letters as reproduced in the Elizabethan and later Writing Masters' Books. The writer has noted no instance of the use of such blocks amongst Archives, but it might quite well occur. The word ' engraved ' is intended here to include all kinds of modern photographic processes in which engraving by acid is employed : but early examples of the use of tool-engraved plates for Archive purposes can be found ; for example amongst Bishops' Certificates of Institutions to Benefices of the eighteenth century (e. g. Bishop's Cert. Bristol 25 : which may be compared with contemporary MS. examples) and in early nineteenth- century forms used by the Commissioners of the Treasury in addressing the officers of the Exchequer of Receipt, by the War Office (e. g. in W. O. 25, 745) for Returns of Officers' Services, and so forth. Engraved titles and headings are not uncommon in the eighteenth century. Modern photographic process reproductions are common amongst the Copyright Records in the Public Record Office, but these are generally cases of ' annexing '.
§2 WHAT ARE ARCHIVES? 7
reasonably assumed to have formed part of or been annexed to, specific documents thus defined.
We differ here slightly from the Continental Authorities who, in their definition of Archives, include maps and plans and the like, but make no mention of the case of blank books or of material evidences annexed, even fastened, to documents : they prefer, indeed, to separate these last and relegate them to Museums, a procedure to which we object because it cannot be carried out to its logical conclusion in all cases without damage to Archives or Archive quality.1 We use of course the word 'annexed' literally as meaning something of a size to be fastened to or conveniently associated with the document to which it belongs. The distinction between what can and cannot be ' annexed ' to a document is like all fine distinctions, difficult. Its particular difficulty may perhaps be illustrated best by a reductio ad absurdum. Supposing for example that a Viceroy sends home to the Secretary of State in England an elephant with a suitable covering-note or label ; or supposing, to take a more actual example, that the Government of a Colony presents to the First Commissioner of Works in London a two- hundred-foot spar of Douglas Pine : the question may be imagined to arise : Is the spar ' annexed ' to correspondence with the Government of British Columbia ? Is the elephant attached to the label or the label to the elephant ?
The answer to those who would put this dilemma to us in the present connexion is that the Administration would be obliged in all such cases to solve the question of housing — to send the spar to Kew Gardens or the elephant to the Zoo — long before the label or letter comes into charge of the Archivist:2 the problem is an Administrative, not an Archive one.
(d) Archives Public and Private. But we have not yet done with our copy of The Times. Let us consider the case of an authenticated copy of that paper filed not in the Foreign Office
1 It is quite opposed to the spirit of the rule (approved by all Continental authorities) which bases all modern arrangement of Archives upon that of their original compilers — — the ordre primitif : see below, Part II, § 6 (r).
2 See below, the section dealing with the point at which his duties begin.
8 INTRODUCTORY part i
but in the Office of the Newspaper itself. This is obviously part of the Archives of the Paper. It is true that it proves no more than that The Times was published on a certain day and contained certain statements : but its archive quality is exactly the same as that of the Treaty Paper preserved in the Foreign Office ; it is as incontrovertible evidence for the History of Journalism as is the Foreign Office paper for the History of our Diplomatic Relations. It seems then that Archives as a term must be extended to collections made by private or semi-private bodies or persons, acting in their official or business capacities.1 Local Authorities, Commercial Firms, the responsible Heads of any undertakings may, probably will, leave behind them Archives. Many, to quote a distinguished Belgian Archivist, do so as Monsieur Jourdain wrote prose.
(e) When Documents become Archives. We are progressing with our definition but we have not yet finished. It is clear that documents written in and for any * Office ' are, from the time of their writing, ' Official ' documents and that others of external origin (letters received, for example) become c Official ' as soon as they are taken in for ' Office ' purposes. But we have not yet decided the point at which Letters or Memoranda cease to be Office Files and become Archives. Perhaps on account of a false derivation2 the test of Archive quality has been generally taken to be that of age ; but a more satisfactory limitation would probably be the point at which, having ceased to be in current use,3 they are definitely set aside for preservation,
1 The word is also understood as including the documentary collections of private persons by Muller, Feith, and Fruin (§ i) and by Langlois (article in the Revue Inter- nationale des Archives . . . , quoted above) : cf. Mr. Gilson's notice of Mr. Johnson's book in History, April 1920, p. 42. Indeed the use goes back so far as to the remark- able Ministerial Circular of April 16, 1841, quoted by Bordier, Les Archives de la France (Paris, 1855), P. 8.
An interesting example of the formality ascribed to the keeping of private (family) archives in England in quite early times is supplied by the use of the formal word irrotulatur in a note in an Inquisition post mortem (37 Edward III, First Numbers, 98) ' et sic dies obitus eiusdem irrotulatur in Psalterio apud Midhurst ' : the entry in the family bible was, quite rightly, considered as an archive.
3 The Greek word is dpx^ov not dpxaiov.
3 Not necessarily ceased to be in use altogether. There are plenty of cases where documents have been drawn into the administrative circle again after a century or more of idleness : for example, see below (p. 33), Part II, § 2 (a), note.
§2 WHAT ARE ARCHIVES? 9
tacitly adjudged worthy of being kept. Unfortunately the time at which this occurs must obviously vary with circumstances. The closest definition, therefore, that we can use in this matter is to say that the documents are set aside for preservation in official custody.
(J) Custody. The last point needs perhaps a little extension. Indeed we shall do well to stress it, for it is upon this question of custody that English Archives and Archive practice may make some real contribution to the sum of Archive Science. How distinctive the question of custody is may be seen by contrasting the English Deputy Keeper's Reports, with their chronicle of severely official accretions, with the accroissements by gift and by purchase which occupy so many pages in the Annuaire of the Belgian State Archives.1
Are all documents which owe their preservation to an administrative or official quality in their origin Archives ? Are the Additional Charters, for example, in the British Museum, the cream of so many private collections — are these Archives ? they certainly were so at one stage of their existence : or are they to be condemned because they have slipped from that official custody ? And what of the numerous collections of State Papers in private hands ? 2 When the head of a London business firm buys in the sale-room a quantity of the Medici papers,3 exported from Italy for the purpose, are these Archives? If the modern purchaser of an estate, finding himself also the purchaser of documents, presents a number of accounts, with wooden tallies attached, to an Anthropological Museum,4 are these Archives ? and if all these are Archives, whose Archives
1 Compare, for example, the interesting Archives de VEtat en Belgique pendant la guerre, 1914-1918, published under the direction of M. Joseph Cuvelier, with the 79th-8ist Reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records.
2 See below, Part II, § 2 (e).
3 Some of these documents, to which Mr. Self ridge, who bought them in London, was good enough to allow me access, certainly at one time formed part of the Medici Archives. They are now in America.
4 The Science Museum at South Kensington possesses the only complete Exchequer Tally (stock and foil together) that I have seen. Tally Stocks in the Bank of England and similar institutions are still there in an Archive capacity : but stray examples (Exchequer and Private) may be found in Public Museums and Libraries (e. g. the Reference Library at Birmingham) and in private collections all over the country.
i o INTRODUCTORY part i
are they ? if they are not, at what stage did they cease to possess that quality ?
The position of Records of the Common Law in England may help here to clear our conceptions. There are many series of Public Records, preserved at the Public Record Office in London, of which certain numbers have escaped through various vicissitudes in the past into various private or public collections, such as the British Museum.1 Now a certified copy from one of the main body of these in the Record Office would be received in any Court of Law as evidence of the transactions it records : for one in the British Museum to receive the same credence would involve almost certainly the production of the actual document in Court and certainly its support by a body of expert testimony to its authenticity. The echo of this legal point in a literary or historical setting may be seen in the case of the well-known volume,2 part of the Accounts of the Master of the Revels, which was for a considerable time in the possession of the antiquary Peter Cunningham though it has long since been restored to official custody. No certified copy from this document is given by the Record Office without a statement of the above fact in its history and those interested in Shake- spearian chronology are still disputing 3 (and unless some new external evidence is discovered will continue always to dispute) whether the entries on one page are or are not an interpolation by Cunningham. So great is the value of custody that the constant effort of private forgers in all periods has been to get copies of their forgeries enrolled in some public series, because they knew that the authenticity of the enrolment would never be called in question4 and hoped that by a confusion of ideas the
1 Examples are given below (Part IV, § 1 1 , note) of State Papers which have suffered in this way. Here we may quote the recently discovered case of original Papal Bulls formerly preserved in the Exchequer of Receipt and calendared there by Stapleton in 1323 (see Part II, § 1 (c), note) which are now in the British Museum.
2 Audit Office 3/908, No. 13.
3 Modern controversy on this question was opened by Ernest Law's Some supposed Shakespearean Forgeries in 191 1. The latest contributions to a series of exchanges on the subject are S. A. Tannenbaum, Shakspere Forgeries in the Revels Accounts (New York, 1928) and A. E. Stamp, The Disputed Revels Accounts (Oxford, 1930).
4 Compare the forgeries of early Royal Charters enrolled upon the later Charter
§§2,3,4 WHAT ARE ARCHIVES? n
thing enrolled would pass uncriticized. As will appear later,1 we do not wish to press for a purely legal definition of custody ; but the above examples make it clear that Archive quality is dependent upon the possibility of proving an unblemished line of responsible custodians.2
§ 3. Definition of Archives
We may now attempt a definition which shall cover all the possibilities mentioned above. First we have defined a docu- ment as covering for our purpose manuscript, type-script, and printed matter, with any other material evidence which forms part of it or is annexed to it. A document which may be said to belong to the class of Archives is one which was drawn up or used in the course of an administrative or executive transaction {whether public or private) of which itself formed a part ; and subsequently preserved in their own custody for their own information by the person or persons responsible for that transaction and their legitimate successors.
To this Definition we may add a corollary. Archives were not drawn up in the interest or for the information of Posterity.
§ 4. Archive Quality and the Historical Criticism of Archives
Outside this definition we have nothing but plain docu- ments— pieces of written evidence each one of which must be
Rolls, e. g. the Charter to Wikes Priory, the two originals of which (quoted in the present writer's Palaeography and the Study of Court Hand), whether or no they were prepared at the time of the confirmation of one of them by Edward III, are certainly not authentic productions of Henry II 's Chancery. Another remarkable case in point is the document, now in the possession of Sir Thomas Barrett Lennard, Bart., which purports to give the arbitrement of Edward IV, under his sign manual and privy seal, in the case of the Dacre Barony, or Baronies ; and which was enrolled in Chancery, not without scrutiny, in the reign of Elizabeth. Had this been one of the Writs of Privy Seal addressed to the Chancery, and preserved among the Records of that Office, its authenticity would have been unquestioned ; whereas its authority, upon a point of some importance in relation to Barony jure uxoris, depends upon external criticism of its writing and so forth : the Privy Seal Office itself did not keep an enrolment or register (at least none has survived) against which such writs might be checked. I am indebted to Mr. H. A. Doubleday for this example.
1 See below, Part II, § 2 (/).
2 On the subject of Forgery, see again § 4 below.
1 2 INTRODUCTORY part i
treated upon its individual merits by the Historian or other student who would use it for his own purposes. Inside it, we are dealing with an enormous mass of documents which, however varied their origin and contents and the appeal which they make to students, however far apart their respective dates, have at least two common grounds upon which they can be analysed and tested, two common features of extraordinary value and importance.
The first of these features is Impartiality. Drawn up for purposes almost infinitely varying — the administrative or exe- cutive control of every species of human undertaking — they are potentially useful to students for the information they can give on a range of subjects totally different but equally wide : the only safe prediction, in fact, concerning the Research ends which Archives may be made to serve is that with one partial exception these will not be the purposes which were contem- plated by the people by whom the Archives were drawn up and preserved. The single partly exceptional case is the one where they are examined for the light they throw upon the history of one branch or another of public or private Administration — the branch to which they themselves belonged. Provided,1 then, that the student understands their administrative significance they cannot tell him anything but the truth.
Impartiality is a gift which results from the first part of our definition of Archives. In the second part of that definition we stated that Archives were preserved in official custody and for official information only ; and this gives us the second of their distinguishing qualities, Authenticity. It would appear that not only are Archives by their origin free from the suspicion of prejudice in regard to the interests in which we now use them : they are also by reason of their subsequent history
1 The proviso is, of course, sometimes a large one. For example, the series of Receipt Rolls of the Exchequer at the Public Record Office has more than once been used by students under the impression that they furnished a complete and accurately reckoned list of moneys received by the Crown : whereas they were in fact inaccurate and incomplete and at certain periods did not represent receipts. See the article on Tallies in Archaeologia, lxii, p. 367 ; and continuations in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, second series, xxv, p. 34, and Archaeologia, lxxiv, p. 289.
§4 HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF ARCHIVES 13
equally free from the suspicion of having been tampered with in those interests.
The consideration of these qualities of Archives leads us on to that of the Historical Criticism of Documents * in general. One or two special Archive points may conveniently be dealt with here.
In the first place, the possibility of forgery in the literary or historical interest may be practically ruled out : we have seen one example, or alleged example, it is true : 2 but forgery of this kind could not be of anything save the rarest occurrence, for it means that custody has been broken with the deliberate intention of falsification ; and that this has happened in comparatively recent times — in the case of many historical interests which are of modern growth one might say in very recent times — and without the custodians becoming aware of it.
It is not to be supposed of course that forgeries of other kinds do not occur among documents which have come down to us in custody. They do ; both actual fabrications of documents and cases where documents have been tampered with after the date of their writing in the way either of suppressio veri or suggestio falsi : indeed we have already had some examples ; 3 and plenty of others might be found — forged Tallies,4 forged Fines 5 and other forgeries, some of them discovered in their own day, some which it has been reserved for modern scholarship to detect.
Now, from the point of view of their writing there are, as
1 My original intention had been to develop this at more length in an Appendix with special reference to Archives : but the publication of Mr. R. L. Marshall's Historical Criticism of Documents : (S.P.C.K., Helps for Students of History, 1920) which puts within the reach of all students a convenient resume of the conclusions of Bernheim, Freeman, Seignobos, and others, made this unnecessary ; especially as we should have been mainly concerned to point out that most of the critical tests usually applied to historical documents are not, in view of the qualities described above, required in the case of Archives.
2 The alleged Cunningham forgery referred to above, § 2.
3 Cf. ibid., the reference to forgery of Royal Charters.
4 See an article in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, second series, vol. xxv, p. 34 : an example communicated to me by the late Professor Willard is in Exchequer L. T. R. Memoranda Roll, 69 (1297), m. 32.
6 See Mr. H. G. Richardson in English Hist. Rev., vol. xxxv (1920), p. 405.
i4 INTRODUCTORY parti
we have seen, two kinds of Archives ; those actually written by the persons who used them for the same administrative purposes which have caused them to be preserved down to our time, and those which were indeed used by those persons, have perhaps even come down to us in a copy by their hands, but which were written originally by some other persons and possibly in some other interest. In the case of the first of these classes we may once more practically rule out the possi- bility of forgery : the persons who wrote did so for their own reference and what motive could they have for deceit ? It is true that we have cases where, as in the two examples of forged Fines quoted by Mr. Richardson, custody has been violated and forged documents inserted in a genuine series by persons from without ; but these are altogether exceptional — it is noteworthy that both were speedily discovered and on the other hand that this class, perhaps the most commonly used of all Public Records, has yielded no other case of forgery to the examination of modern scholarship. In any case, given an unbroken custody, the possibility of forgery is practically nil.
Turning to the other kind of Archives, that of documents written originally by one person or body and preserved by another, we have not of course the same guarantee against forgery or tampering, because there are now two sides involved and either may have a motive for deceiving the other. Thus A., the body which preserved and was the means of the Archive coming down to us, may wish to foist upon B. the responsibility for a document purporting to be written by B. but really fabricated or garbled by A. : for example, the owner of a collection of deeds from other persons may quite well insert amongst them one forged by himself.1
On the other hand A. may have foisted upon it by B.
1 To take again the example of the Fine, which was an Indenture made in triplicate, though it is, as we have said, so rare as to be almost impossible for a forgery to occur among the Feet (the parts of it preserved in the Court of Common Pleas), there were no doubt plenty of pretended second or third parts of a fine — forgeries — preserved in private collections (cp. again Mr. Richardson's article) ready to be used on any occasion when appeal was not likely to be made to the official series.
§§ 4, 5 DUTIES OF THE ARCHIVIST 15
a document which is not genuine and may innocently accept it and include it among its own Archives. We have seen already the case where forgeries of Royal Charters were pre- sented to the Chancery for confirmation, accepted by it and preserved to us both as originals1 and in copies by its own hand on the Charter Roll.
Summarizing, we may repeat that forgery or falsification is to be regarded as altogether exceptional among Archives. It is only to be expected (1) in the rare case where custody has been violated though the fact is not known, (2) where the Archive in question is not a single production but is of the kind made by one person or body and preserved by another. In such cases it is always open to the critic to ask if either party had any interest in deceiving the other. At the same time we are to remember that both parties had an interest in detecting each other's malpractices; and that neither had any interest in deceiving us.
§ 5. The Duties of the Archivist
The duties of the Archivist, as it is one of the chief functions of this volume to point out, become under these circumstances very obvious, at least in their main lines. They are primary and secondary. In the first place he has to take all possible precautions for the safeguarding of his Archives and for their custody, which is the safeguarding of their essential qualities. Subject to the discharge of these duties he has in the second place to provide to the best of his ability for the needs of historians and other research workers. But the position of primary and secondary must not be reversed.2
It is not his business to deal with questions of policy — to decide whether twenty thousand pounds, or one thousand or
1 All early charters copied in confirmation have to be subjected to careful criticism owing to the ignorance of the clerks who copied them : cp. the case of the Wikes Charters already quoted. Compare also Ballard, An Eleventh Century Inquisition . . . (British Academy, Records of Social and Economic History . . . , vol. iv (1920), p. ix, where the ignorance of the Norman clerks of Domesday is illustrated.
2 Cp. Muller, Feith, and Fruin, § 19. We deal with these duties in detail in Part II, especially §§ 3 and 5-9.
1 6 INTRODUCTORY part i
nothing should be spent on printing transcripts of his Archives ; whether the student would be best served by having the Archives in a Metropolis, or in the Provinces ; at what date modern * confidential ' Archives should be thrown open to the public. He will doubtless take an intelligent interest in such subjects, but as an Archivist he is not concerned with them : they are questions for Historians, Politicians, Administrators ; whom, at most, he may advise.
We touch this point again later when dealing with the Secondary Duties of the Archivist.1
§ 6. Illustration from English Archives
If the duties of the Archivist are simple in broad outline they are by no means so in detail ; and he can very easily by a very small ignorance do incalculable damage. It is therefore highly important that he should be supported by a theory based on the widest possible experience ; and it is a distinct lack that England, a country which, by reason of its unrevolutionary history and conservative habits and in spite of a long period of neglectfulness, has preserved a greater number of long and continuous Archive series than any other in Europe, should have made up to the present so small a contribution to the Science of Archives. An official pamphlet published in America though in English does not refer to English Archives.2 With the exception of Mr. Charles Johnson8
1 See below, Part II, § 8.
2 Note on the Care, Cataloguing, Calendaring and Arranging of Manuscripts, published by the Library of Congress (3rd ed., Washington, 1934). The connexion in which this pamphlet is published gives it naturally so much prestige that I feel bound to remark that among many excellent precepts it contains (especially in the part devoted to Arrange- ment but also, e. g., under Repairing) some suggestions which are contrary to the experi- ence and rules of Archivists in many countries. The writer, though he uses the words ' Archival ' and ' Archivist ' frequently, does not distinguish satisfactorily between Manuscripts and Archives : and for the latter some of his proposals, such as that of sortation by ' less expert hands ' (p. 5) would be definitely dangerous.
3 The Care of Documents (S.P.C.K., Helps for Students of History, No. 5). I have excluded the Reports of the Royal Commission of 19 10 because they deal rather with special cases than with general principles and are concerned more with national Archive policy than with practical rules for Archive keeping : though the existence of such rules mav often be inferred from their recommendations.
§§6j7 ILLUSTRATION FROM ENGLISH ARCHIVES 17
(and his work is limited by its format1) no one has yet attempted to draw from the extraordinarily wide field of English Adminis- trative History and Administrative Remains anything like a complete body of illustration of general Archive theory and practice. And the present 2 seems a favourable time for an attempt to fill this gap.
As we propose to illustrate throughout from English Archives we shall need for reference purposes a Conspectus of the Divisions of Administrative Documents, Public and Private, in England. This will be found in Appendix I at the end of the present volume : but recent publications have made possible some modifications of its original form.
§ 7. Standardization of Method
We have been concerned so far to show that, within certain strictly defined limits, the word Archives is one of very general applicability. The circumstances which produce Archives being common and commonly recurrent in administration in all countries, and in all grades of administration, from the most private to the most public, it would seem, at first, easy to secure an advantageous standardization of all rules, great and small, for dealing with all Archives : some Authorities have aimed even at a standardization of terminology and of such small matters as the ways of expressing dates in inventories. This has been the aim of the learned authors of the Manuel pour le Classement des Archives ^ and they have been so far successful that their work is the recognized authority in more
1 It runs to only 47 pages. Since this passage was written the Chairman of the Bedfordshire County Council Records Committee, Dr. G. H. Fowler, has published a very valuable work on the Care of County Muniments (1923 : 2nd ed. 1928) dealing in some 80 pages with the problems particularly affecting a County Archivist.
2 When this book first appeared the last of the three Reports of the Royal Commission (1910) on Public Records, with their valuable Appendices, had recently been published : and I was able to note also ' the much increased attention now given in this country to Librarianship and the inclusion of Archive Science in that subject '. The remarkable further development of interest in Archives since 1922 is dealt with in the Preface to the present re-issue.
3 Muller, Feith, and Fruin formulate one hundred rules for classing and arrangement, each supplied with a considerable amount of illustrative matter drawn from the Archives of Holland, Belgium or France.
18 INTRODUCTORY parti
than one country besides their own. It may be questioned, however, whether quite so rigid an application of principle is desirable, or at any rate possible, in all cases. They themselves, for example, have called attention x to the profound difference between Continental and English Archives caused by the absence in England of the disruptive and again assimilative influence of the French Revolution and of the circumstances which attended it at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries (the most formative period in modern Archive history) ; and even in the case of the countries for which they particularly legislated they have found it necessary to recognize that compromise may in certain circum- stances be desirable or even necessary. And there are other difficulties : in most countries (in France, for example, as well as in England) 2 the old methods of arranging and classifying have left their mark — a mark differing in different cases but unlikely in any case ever to be entirely effaced : again pro- found differences in methods of administration,3 reacting upon the Records which survive, must have some influence upon nomenclature and perhaps even on arrangement : and the same may be said of different systems of Archive organization at the present day.4 Similarly between us and any complete standardization there rises, among other difficulties, the great bar of language : who shall translate satisfactorily into English, for example, the word fonds ? and can we really, as a matter of practical policy, import into English Archive practice the distinction implied by the use of the word protocol ?
On the other hand the few great principles which have governed and must govern the making, and should therefore govern also the classification, handling and use, of Archives
1 Muller, Feith, and Fruin, § 36.
2 The Archives Nationales still retain many traces of their old arrangement under subjects.
3 The contrast between English Law and the various representatives of Roman Law is an obvious instance.
4 The enormous number of authorities that control archive collections of a more or less public character in England at the present day, as shown by the late Commission's Reports, forms a good illustration of this point when compared with the centralized Archive Administration of (for example) Holland or Belgium.
§ 7 STANDARDIZATION OF METHOD 19
cannot but be the same everywhere. It has seemed best, therefore, to the present writer to allow these leading principles and their corollaries to emerge from an independent examina- tion into the nature,1 the evolution,2 and the stages in trans- mission 3 of Archives as they may be traced in this country, and, without any attempt at the formulation of rules which should cover all individual cases, to show how the same large principles may be applied, invariably, as criteria of correct procedure not only in the matters of arrangement and classification but upon any and every side of the Archivist's work — in his care for the physical state of his documents, his preservation of their moral qualities as Archives, his methods of listing, his procedure in calendaring and printing, his communications with the world of Research, and one other matter which is dealt with in sections 8 and 9 of this Part. In one or two cases (notably the question of custody to which reference has already been made) the result may be to lead us away from the conclusions of the Authorities of the Foreign School; 4 and we may find ourselves dealing with certain matters which they have not considered. For the most part, however, our view should be the same as theirs though taken from a different angle. And if the Archivist is here provided with a general guide rather than a detailed set of rules at least we should be sure that no theories are enunciated which are not applicable to Archive work in any country, nor on the other hand any first principles omitted. In most sciences and arts it will be found that special cases can be satisfactorily met by any one who combines a sound theory with ordinary common sense and both with practical experience. It is that combination that we wish to commend to the Archivist.5
1 See above, §§ 2, 3, and 4, the definition of Archive qualities.
2 See below, Part II, § 1.
3 Ibid., §§ 2 and 3.
* Where such differences occur they are generally indicated in the text or in footnotes.
6 I had written the larger part of this work when my attention was called to the ' tentative outline ' for a Manual of Archive Management contributed by Mr. Victor Palsits to the Report of the Archives Commission of the American Historical Association for 191 3-14 ; published during the War this excellent scheme had
2o INTRODUCTORY part i
§ 8. The original appearance and present reproduction of this Book
My reasons for the re-issue of this Manual have been set out in the Preface. When it first appeared in 1922, in company with a number of Economic Studies relating to the War Period, I wrote under this heading as follows: —
The practical side of historical study has been much emphasized by the events of the last five years. From the naval strategy of Great Britain at the beginning of the War to the work, largely historical, "which preceded the Peace Conference at the end of it, few important branches of war- time administration, whether on the military or the civil side, have been without a trace of the activities of the Historian; and certainly none have omitted to bring themselves into that position with regard to History which is implied in the amassing of Archives. In England some Public Departments have gone farther and have experimented in the production of something more than the customary Blue Book. For the War Office and Admiralty to issue their own versions of the Military and Naval History of a war is no new thing ; but the compilation by the Ministry of Munitions of an elaborate Economic Treatise, in the shape of its own History drawn from its own Archives, is distinctly a departure. Such activities reflect the addition of a new series of Archive problems to the already considerable number which faced us. The fact is that the enormous stock of fresh experience which has been accumulated during the War and which will be material for the work of the future historian, not to mention students in other branches of learning, is hidden in a mass of documents so colossal that the question of their housing alone (apart from those of their handling, sifting and use) presents quite novel features.1 Nor is bulk the only problem.
The questions raised already by the introduction into administration of new methods of communication and of recording (the telephone, for example, and the typewriter) become now pressing. In fine, it is largely the addition of this abnormal mass of new Archive matter to our existing collections which compels us to face the fact that we must make at any rate a beginning of settling our Archive problems, old and new, if we are to deal satisfactorily with the present and safeguard the future of research work.
escaped my notice. A manual completed on the lines there laid down should contain, when it is issued, a large amount of what the Archivist requires in the way of sugges- tion and precept. But I still venture to hope that the present book, based on those Archives which have inspired the work of so many American scholars, may be found to contain a point of view and illustrations worthy of some attention.
1 The Royal Commission {Third Report, vol. i, p. 38 : cp. ibid., vol. ii, pp. 120 et seqq.) estimated that the bulk was as large as that of the total previous contents of the Public Record Office.
§§8,9 ARCHIVES OF THE FUTURE 21
After fourteen years I have little to add to the above except that the problem of Bulk in Modern Archives is proving in the case of the Archives of Central Administration certainly no less serious than I anticipated x and that one result of a gratifying increase in the attention bestowed by Local Authorities on their Archives is to shew that the same difficulty is being or will have to be faced in every centre of Administration in the Country. Nor, of course, is the problem one which is confined to England.2
§ 9. A new Problem : the Making of the Archives of the Future
The chief claim made for this work when it was first issued was that it purposed to raise at least one new question in Archive Science ; one which had up to then been little considered and for the forcing of which upon our attention these im- possibly bulky War Archives were largely responsible. The question was that of the making of the Archives of the future :3 and the post- War years have only served to emphasize it. Can we, faced with these modern accumulations, leave any longer to chance the question what Archives are to be preserved ? Can we on the other hand attempt to regulate them without destroying that precious characteristic of impartiality which results, in the case of the older Archives, from the very fact that their preservation was settled either by pure chance or at least by considerations which did not include the possible require- ments of future Historians ? There is considerable danger that a periodical compilation made by an office from its own Archives definitely for historical purposes 4 — even for publication — may come to be treated, by the uncritical historian, not as
1 It has engaged the attention of an inter-departmental Committee and been the sub- ject of Official consideration in more than one connexion.
2 In the United States National Archives the ' accumulation rate ' of public docu ments has been estimated at as much as 200,000 cubic feet per annum.
3 Some indication of the existence of this problem appeared in an article in the London Mercury in April 1920.
4 On the lines of the larger work which, as we have mentioned above, was compiled at the Ministry of Munitions. Note that what is here said does not apply to a Summary or Digest made for Office purposes. The distinction is a delicate one but of extreme
22 INTRODUCTORY part i
a guide, but as an efficient substitute for the Archives them- selves. Can we prevent this and at the same time neutralize the threat of hopeless unwieldiness ? If we can do something to solve this problem, which, by the way, is not entirely a new one though presented to us now in a new light, we shall have done something to earn the gratitude of future research workers.
§ 10. Summarizing
The first aim of this book must, it seems, be twofold. It is required to lay down in outline a plan of our duties to the Archives which have been left to us by the past ; a plan which shall be conditioned entirely by their own fundamental characteristics. From this first process we are to draw certain general principles of Archive values which we may attempt to apply to a new problem — the direction, without altering their Archive character, of the formation of the Archives of the future. Towards this end we have gone some distance by defining the word Archives and deducing from that definition certain ideas as to Archive Quality.1
importance. See below, Part IV, § 12, the discussion of the character of the Register in a modern office. Of course the copy of an officially compiled History which is filed for Record purposes becomes itself an Archive from the time of filing : it is evidence that a certain Historical View was officially put forward ; but not evidence of the Historic Facts.
1 Above, §§ 2, 3, and 4.
PART II
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHIVES AND RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING
§ i . The Evolution of Archives
(a) Primary Division of Archives. The starting-point of the compilation of Archives in early times is an easy thing to imagine or even in the case of ancient collections to see in action. The official or responsible person — let us call him the Administrator — who has to preside over any continuous series of business functions, the manager of a small estate at one end of the scale, the controller of a kingdom's finances at the other, relies for the support of his authority on memory : so soon as writing becomes general in use he adopts the preservation of pieces of writing as a convenient form of artificial memory ; and in doing so starts a collection of Archives. He avails himself of this convenience by preserving
the originals of written instructions or information he has
received ; copies of similar documents which he has issued; and
memoranda (a diary as it were) of his own proceedings.
All Archives must necessarily fall into these three groups — documents which come into an office ; (copies of) documents which go out ; and documents which do neither, which circulate within it.
(b) Earliest Archives : the File. We see our Administrator, then, starting with the simplest of all Archive forms, a file ; which we use as a generic term for a sack or box or hamper
24 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT part h
or other receptacle * in which are contained, or a string on which are threaded, a miscellaneous collection of scraps of paper or parchment of these three kinds.
In the case of English Public Archives, putting aside the contentious question whether we have or have not surviving fragments of Chancery Archives previous to the Enrolment period, we need go no further than to the famous Dialogus de Scaccario for evidence that this primitive state once existed in both the Chancellor's department and the Treasurer's. The Archives of the first of these, as they are known to Richard Fitz Niel, are the contrabrevia,2 copies of those Royal Writs issued by the department of which it was desired to retain memory : in the case of the Exchequer the Dialogus gives us no hint, it is true, of a period when the Pipe Roll itself, the most venerable of English Records, was anything but a complete roll ; and it is possible that this most formidable of Archives was born like Athena : but it does clearly indicate a period, before the Pipe Roll existed, when the records of the finance department consisted of no more than bundles of wooden tallies.3 As to other ' proceedings ' of the Royal Court in this country the writer has suggested elsewhere 4 that the beginnings of another most venerable series, that of the Memoranda Rolls of the Exchequer, may be clearly traced in certain very fragmentary pieces which have come down to us ; and it is possible that the earliest archives of the third great division of Medieval Royal Administration — the Legal — were of a nature to include those filed Feet of Fines of which we have the first notice in connexion with the year 1 163.5
So much for the second and third of our primary Archive classes (documents issued and proceedings). In the case of the
1 White leather and other bags to hold records survive even now in many cases ; the ' Hanaper ' (hamper) gave its name to a whole Archive Department ; and the Domesday and other chests are prominent features in the Record Office Museum.
2 Oxford ed., p. 82. The Dialogus was written in the latter half of the twelfth century by Richard Fitz Niel, himself a former Treasurer.
3 Ibid., p. 60.
4 In an article on the Financial Records of the Reign of King John in the Magna Carta Commemoration volume published by the Royal Historical Society : the view is again supported by passages in the Dialogus.
5 At a later date we get clear indications of an intermediate stage between Miscellanea on files and the fully developed and formal legal record, the Plea Roll. These may be found in the class which represents the ' Ancient Miscellanea ' of the Court of King's Bench — that known as Ancient Indictments, which frequently contain fragments very closely parallel to the class of Assize Rolls, &c. For these see an article by Miss B. H. Putnam in English Hist. Rev., xxix, 1914, p. 479 ; and for the Fine cited here, L. F. Salzmann (ibid., xxv, 19 10, p. 708). On the subject of Feet of Fines see below Part II, § 2 (c), note.
§ i THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHIVES 25
first, that of documents received x by the Royal Court, we are on even surer ground. It is hardly necessary to offer any proof that from the earliest times such documents, in the, form of a miscellaneous collection of isolated pieces, introduce some- thing which may be called an Archive Class into the contents of the Royal Treasury. Such is indeed the normal procedure in all countries and all ages ; as Palgrave reminds us in an apt quotation from the Book of Ezra.
But we have gone a little in advance of our theme and must turn back to a consideration of the next stage in Archive evolution.
(c) Differentiation. We come here upon the first of a series of steps in the evolution of Archives consisting of the separation of bulky or important classes from the main series of Miscellanea into separate files, boxes, &c. The very important single document may have a box or pyx or other receptacle all to itself, as is seen in various cases in the first of the Record Inventories printed by Palgrave,2 cases which doubtless were a survival from still earlier times. Speaking, however, of the generality of Archives we may say that from an original collection not arranged upon any particular principle there will very soon be separated off such classes as by reason of their numbers or the fact that they are frequently required for reference are judged worthy of the dignity of a separate file.3
1 On the subject of these early collections see H. Hall, Studies in English Official Historical Documents (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 13 et seqq.
2 The Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of His Majesty's Exchequer (Record Commission, 1832) : the Inventory here referred to is that of Stapleton, com- pleted in 1323. The curious will find in this work some pictures of receptacles anciently used for the storing of Archives. The whole work, which contains specimens of English Archivists' work from the fourteenth century (Stapleton) to the seventeenth (Agarde) is of great historical interest to Archivists.
3 An obvious class of these would be those writs which are periodically required for reference — the contrabrevia already mentioned, copies of Royal Writs issued by the Chancery which had some connexion with or bearing upon the Royal finances and would therefore be required at Audit. We may remark that once a class is thus differentiated it is a very small step, where the documents consist of copies or memoranda, from the making of such copies or memoranda on a series of scraps of parch- ment to their making upon scraps of an equal size which may be made up into a register or a roll : accordingly we shall presently find these contrabrevia taking the form of a roll.
26 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT parth
(d) Differentiation : continued. Differentiation may be
based upon either the form or the subject-matter of the documents in question, the word * form ' being understood in the sense both of physical shape and of diplomatic con- ception.
It is very possible that the irregular but large size of the Inquisitions post mortem, among the Chancery Records, the Escheats as they were generally called, was the original cause of their being placed in separate files : x it is quite clear, to take a later example, that the reason why, among the Archives of the African Company,2 the Journals of Cape Coast Castle formed a large separate series while the Day Books of that and other forts in Africa lay hidden 3 amongst masses of miscellaneous papers, was that the second of these series was contained in small paper-bound books while the first was an imposing collection of large volumes. An instance of differentiation based on another kind of form (the diplomatic form of the document) 4 is that of the earlier Norman Rolls,5 which are enrolments of copies of such letters under the great seal as were made and dated in Normandy. While an example of differentiation based on subject-matter (and incidentally of a modern mistake in classification) 6 is supplied by the later rolls in the same class 7 (dating from the fifth to the tenth year of Henry V), which are rolls of matters relating to Normandy ; having no better connexion than the chance identity of name with the earlier Rolls.
1 These documents, inquiries regarding the property held by tenants-in-chief of the Crown, take the form of writs ordering the inquiries to be made (these were returned to the Chancery after execution) and the result of the inquiries in the form of parch- ments of an almost infinite variety of sizes and shapes according to the amount of the property to be described.
That they occupied separate files as early as the reign of Edward III is well established. That other Inquisitions (such as those of the classes known now as Criminal and Miscellaneous) had their place on the Miscellaneous Files of the Chancery is equally certain (see Record Office Calendar of Miscellaneous Inquisitions, vol. i, preface, pp. vii and viii). There is further an indication that this distinction of the ' Escheats ' might occasionally be forgotten (ibid., p. xii, the Case of the ' Proofs of Age ' found in 1841 on the ordinary Chancery Files). A good example will be found in the same place (p. xiii) of the rise of a small class — in this case the Inquisitions de Rebellibus — to the temporary dignity of a separate file.
2 The Records of three Companies which traded to Africa under Letters Patent of Incorporation came into the possession of the Treasury and are now among the Archives of that Department in the Public Record Office : see below, Part II, § 2 (/).
3 They have now been sorted out.
4 It is possible that the Inquisitions post mortem should properly be assigned to this class.
6 1 to 6 John, Numbers 1 to 7 in the present class at the Public Record Office.
6 See the article on the Records of John already quoted.
7 Numbers 8 to 17.
§ i THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHIVES 27
It is worth while, in this connexion, to take a general view of differen- tiation in the Chancery. The original Miscellanea, or Files of Archives of all kinds, are split up into ( 1 ) Chancery Files — documents in filaciis — and (2) Chancery Enrolments. Amongst (1) we may distinguish Miscellaneous Files and Files dealing with particular subjects, while (2) immediately splits again into Patent, Charter, and Liberate Rolls, being rolls of three different kinds of letter under the Great Seal. Now note the progress of the Liberate Roll.1 When we first meet it we recognize merely an enrolment form of the old file of contrabrevia already mentioned. Contrabrevia all take the form of letters close and it is only one step farther to add other letters close, not interesting the Exchequer, to those already enrolled, and our Liberate Roll becomes the Close Roll so well known to students in Record Commission and Record Office Calendars. But there is yet another step to come. The need for a separate roll is again felt and we get a new Liberate Roll split off from the Close Roll, which continues to exist separately.
By a further extension this new Liberate Roll has added to it copies of other writs in a different form authorizing not the ' livery ' of money but the ' allowance ' of expenditure.
We have gone into this case in some detail because in it we may see that the process of bifurcation is always going on, being indeed a condition of healthy active life, just as reproduction and increase are conditions of healthy active life elsewhere. But we may see some- thing else. Behind the newly-made series — in the case of the Chancery, the enrolments — there lies always a residuum of the undifferentiated, the old files, the classes which in the case of all English Medieval Courts have come to be known ultimately as the 'Ancient Miscellanea ' : and these, too, continue capable of throwing up new classes, which in their turn may bifurcate and carry on the development. Thus the Chancery Files contained always a certain number of Petitions referred by the Crown to the Chancellor or addressed to him directly. These might or might not be formed into special Files ; but out of them grew ultimately, some two hundred years after the system of Chancery Rolls had become an established thing, the great system of Equity procedure 2 at the Chancery and the great separate classes of files of Chancery Proceedings ; which in due course themselves split up into divisions — the divisions of the six Clerks — besides throwing off all kinds of sub- ordinate Archive Series.3
1 Liberate is the name given to writs authorizing delivery of money out of the Treasury. The Liberate Rolls here instanced must be carefully distinguished from the series bearing, at any rate in modern times, the same name, which was kept at the Exchequer of Receipt. This second series is interesting because it is made up from some of the same writs which gave us the Chancery roll, but at the other end : i. e. the Chancery Liberate are rolls of letters issued, the Exchequer series rolls of letters received ; both copied from the same originals.
2 The distinctive feature of this Equity Procedure was that it began with a petition — a Bill of Complaint — addressed to the Chancellor.
3 Chancery Depositions, Chancery Decrees and Orders, and the like.
28 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT par™
We are coming here to a fresh subject, that of the connexion between classes of Archives and classes of functions and functionaries in the Administrations which produce them. But before we deal with this it may be well to glance at the varying careers of all these generations of Archives.
(e) The varying careers of Archive Classes. While the
original stock, the Ancient Miscellanea, continues to flourish
and perhaps to throw out fresh branches, what may be the
fate of its various offshoots ? There are several possibilities.
(i) An archive class may die out with the circumstances
which brought it into being.
Thus the presence of the Jews in England and the special business which resulted caused the appearance at the Exchequer of Receipt, where money was paid in, of two special classes, separated off from the normal series of Receipt Rolls — the Rolls of Receipts from Jewish Talliages and from other Jewish sources.1 There was also a special legal Court, the Scaccarium Iudeorum, with Records which were probably 2 a differ- entiation from the contemporary Memoranda Rolls. Naturally with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 all these Archive Glasses lapsed. We have seen already a small instance of a short-lived Archive Glass in the case of the Inquisitions de Rebellibus.
(2) A class may be reabsorbed into the class from which
it was differentiated.
Thus in the period of Edward I and Edward II there arose gradually a habit of recording receipts from taxation separately at the end of the ordinary Receipt Roll ; sometimes separate membranes were used and a separate roll resulted. Later these entries returned to the main roll.
(3) Some or all of the functions of an Archive Class may pass from it.
Thus of the various uses of the Charter, the most formal of medieval letters under the great seal of England, which are summarized by Hardy in his introduction to the Rotuli Cartarum 3 most, during the fourteenth century, passed to another form of Royal letter, the letter patent, with a corresponding modification to the Charter Roll and Patent Roll.*
1 See an article on Receipts from the English Jewry in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society, vol. viii, pp. 19 et seqq.
2 The suggestion here made has since been developed in an Introduction to Calendar of the Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, vol. iii (1929).
3 Record Commission edition, 1837.
4 Perhaps an even better example is that of the Close Roll, one of the chief interests of which in the time of John and Henry III is that it contains the King's personal letters. The custom grew up of enrolling private Deeds on this in consideration of a fee : and that ultimately became (and still is) the sole use of the record.
§ i THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHIVES 29
(4) Occasionally a series may be replaced by another
having apparently the same functions and differing only in
name.
Thus the function of recording confirmations passed from the Patent and Charter Rolls in 1483 to the series of Confirmation Rolls, and these again gave way to the Patent Roll later.1
(5) A class may become itself so important that its original
connexion with the parent stock is almost or entirely lost
sight of.
Thus the Exchequer of Pleas Plea Roll (the Record of a Common Law jurisdiction in the King's Remembrancer's department of the Exchequer) was probably in origin no more than a section split off from the Memoranda Roll ; but that origin 2 has become almost entirely obscured owing to its later growth and importance.
(f) Differentiation of Archive Classes and the redistribution of duties among personnel. All this changing of function is of course closely parallel to, in many cases directly caused by, changes in the staff of the Office to which they belong or at any rate in the allotment of the staff's duties. Nothing is more important in a study of the growth of Archives than a study of the growth of the personnel of administration.3 New offices, as a rule, tend naturally and immediately (as we have had opportunity of observing in England during the Great War) to increase the efficiency of their internal machinery by increasing their staff ; they always tend to rearrange and reshuffle duties as soon as they have had some experience of administration. Few things are so striking in administrative history as the way in which most high functionaries of our own day have developed out of very humble medieval begin- nings.
Thus the keeper of the Domus Conversorum had added to his duties about the time of the expulsion of the Jews that of keeping the Rolls of Chancery ; to-day the Master of the Rolls is titular head not only of the Chancery Records but of all the more important Public Archives
1 The Charter Roll finally lapsed in 1516.
2 The theory here advanced has since been proved to the Author's satisfaction in an Introduction to Select Cases in the Exchequer of Pleas (Selden Society, 1932).
3 Tout in his Chapters (already cited) emphasizes throughout the importance of a close study of appointments on the staffs of the various offices.
3o ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT part n
of the Kingdom ; x besides enjoying eminent judicial functions and position : the Chancellor of the Exchequer of our day is an obscure clerk, hardly worthy of mention, in the time of the Dialogus : what had been subordinate posts about the medieval Exchequer became the prizes of Prime Ministers' sons in the days of Horace Walpole. To these large changes of function the Archive changes are always, as we have said, closely parallel ; but it is equally true that small changes in Archives generally connote some small change in the occupation of the places and functions of which the Archives are the visible sign. Probably the comparatively small changes in the functions of the various Chancery Enrolments are just as closely bound up with changes in the clerical staff as the appearance of the State Papers, so strikingly different in their form, or lack of form, from the executive instruments of earlier times, is bound up with the striking re-adjustment of the position and importance of the King's Secretary under the Tudors.2
(g) Archives, Ancient and Modern, Public and Private. It is important to observe that all the foregoing remarks, though we have illustrated them, for reasons of simplicity, mainly from Medieval Public Collections, apply equally to Ancient and Modern, Public and Private : there is practically — can be — no difference in the manner of development of functions and Archives which have existed a tempore de quo non exstat memoria, and of the statute-provided Administrations and Registers of later days. At most, the latter, having the benefit of many analogies to guide them, may start at the second of the stages of evolution we have noted : may skip the stage of Miscellanea. Thus Parish Registers for the entering of Weddings, Christenings and Burials came into existence without any noteworthy preliminaries as the result of Crom- well's injunctions in 1538 : though even so, the Archives thus started have not been without important subsequent modification, notably that effected by the Act of 181 2, which provided separate printed books for the three classes of entries — an obvious example of differentiation.3 Similarly a modern
1 By this survival the present Public Record Office occupies the site of the old Rolls Buildings and Chapel : cp. H. Hall, Studies in English Official Historical Documents (Cambridge, 1908), p. 118 ; quoting syth Report of the Deputy Keeper . . .
2 On the early history of the State Paper Office, see Hall, pp. 30 et seqq.
3 For a convenient summary of the history of Parish Register Form see A. Hamilton Thompson, Parish History and Records (Helps for Students of History : S.P.C.K.), pp. 42 et seqq.
§ i THE EVOLUTION OF ARCHIVES 31
business firm when it comes into existence will not experiment but will start straight away with such books as the analogous experience of countless other firms of the same kind suggests to be suitable. It is hardly necessary to add that it is immaterial for our purpose whether the Authority which calls such Archives into existence be internal or external, the head of an office on the one hand, or on the other, Parliament, directing by statute that such and such Archives shall be kept : by one process or another they come to life and, having come, live and develop along certain lines.
(A) Order of Differentiation. We have now two natural classifications of Archives. First, we saw that all Archives fall into three classes — things received, things issued, and proceedings : secondly, we found that they might be divided into two classes of undifferentiated on the one hand and on the other those which had been differentiated out, according to subject or form, into regular series. Whether these take the form of Rolls, Registers, or Files does not particularly affect us, nor alter the Archive character of the documents themselves : for example Close Rolls have since 1903 taken the form of Books without causing any break in the continuous series running from the time of John to our own day. We also saw that the process of differentiation is always going on — may affect a single set of Archives again and again.
It is to be noticed that these two classifications do not always work into each other in the same way : we cannot say, for example, that any one of the three divisions of receipts, issues, and proceedings is always the first to be differentiated off from a class which contains all three.
Thus at the Medieval Exchequer of Audit the two first series to be differentiated are the Pipe Roll (proceedings only) and the Memoranda Roll (which summarizes the whole business of the Department, In- letters, Out-letters, and Proceedings) : the Chancery on the other hand appears to have differentiated first the Out-letters (copies, mostly on Rolls), then certain classes of the In-letters (returns to writs, on files) ; while no Proceedings appear as a separate class for quite a considerable time. Medieval Legal Administration in England for a long time differentiates little save proceedings {Plea Rolls and the files of Feet of Fines). Among semi-public and private Archives, Bishops' Registers show
32 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT part n
us, it is true, Archives kept in a standard form, but the contents of the Registers are miscellaneous and a similar remark may be made of the Cartularies of private persons or Religious Houses.
(i) The Hands of Former Archivists. Before we conclude this section we must not omit to mention one further stage in the evolution of Archives ; the stage, or stages, of development through which they have passed in the hands of other Archivists before they reach us. Unfortunately the earlier custodians of the Public Records in England (for example) have not always been as reasonable as we could wish in their treatment of their charges. To take only one instance the State Papers * are known to have had one classification in 1545 and to have been re-classified by Sir Thomas Wilson about 1620 and again by Sir Joseph Williamson about 1 680 ; they were then ' method- ized ' between 1764 and 1800 ; and between 1848 and 1862 came under the State Paper Office classification : all this before they reached the Public Record Office, to undergo arrangement there. This again is a matter we shall have to consider later ; meanwhile we may remark that it is clear the very dating of a paper or the identification of its writer may depend upon our knowledge of its whereabouts at a date far removed, perhaps, from our own, but equally long after its original compilation.
§ 2. Transmission of Archives : the Question of Custody
In previous sections we have dwelt upon the extreme importance, for the preservation of Archive character in documents, of the question of Custody. In Section 1 of this part we have seen something of the evolution of Archives and of the Classes into which they fell and fall ; and in the last part of that section we referred to the stages through which any Archive Classes which are handed down to the modern Archivist may have passed in the hands of other Archivists, his predecessors. This may serve to introduce us to a consideration of the ways in which Ancient Archives have been commonly transmitted to our own times. Only upon a consideration of
1 See Hall, op. cit., pp. 134 et seqq.
§ 2 TRANSMISSION OF ARCHIVES 33
such details in Archive history can we found a system of keeping and classification which may be held reasonably safe.
(a) Where the Administration which produced the Archives continues to function. So long as the administrative or executive office discharged by the original owner of the Archives con- tinues to function, so long may this ' Administrator ' be considered to be undying. His successor or successors take over, by themselves or their deputies, his collections of written memorials and use them, when occasion arises, as their original compiler would have used them.1 Thus the Heads of the Courts of Common Pleas and of King's Bench in (say) 1800 were the possessors of what we may call a joint official memory dating back to the twelfth century in the shape of the Archives now known as Curia Regis Rolls.2
(b) Where a new Administration carries on the same functions. But now let us take the history a step farther. In 1873 the functions of the two Courts we have mentioned were transferred to the Supreme Court of Judicature. What then happened to their Archives ? Obviously they are transferred with the functions in question and start a new lease of life, the Archive line remaining still unbroken, as a part of the written memorials of this new Administrative body.3 A precisely parallel case
1 A good deal of the history of early consultation of Records is to be found in the case of the Public Records of England in the class at the Public Record Office known formerly as ' County Placita ' and now in the Chancery Miscellanea, being information transmitted to the Chancery by officials in charge of Archives elsewhere, such for example as Agarde and Fanshawe, whose signatures will be found in (e. g.) bundle 71, file 2.
A good example of early consultation of Ancient Archives was noted recently in a Plea Roll of Edward Ill's reign, which bears a note (the copy of a writ) as to its consultation added in 16 James I {Chester 29/67, m. 114: cp. Curia Regis Roll 160, a Plea Roll of Henry III to which are attached two writs of Edward III).
2 The earliest of these in existence dates from 5 Richard I : the Curia Regis was differentiated into two courts, known to us as the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas, in the thirteenth century, from which date they have separate Archives.
3 Another example is afforded by the Records of the Office of First Fruits and Tenths set up by Henry VIII after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. These records passed to the custody of the Commissioners of Queen Anne's Bounty, a body set up, on the authority of an Act of Parliament, by letters patent of Queen Anne. They passed
34 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT part n
would be (to take only one instance) the acquisition of an estate with its title deeds and other muniments from the family of A., which had held it for ten generations, by the family of B., which proceeds to hold it for ten more.
For example the Manor of Easter or High Easter, in Essex, originally in the possession of Geoffrey de Mandeville, passed through Beatrix de Say, his descendant in the female line, to Geoffrey Fitz Peter, through whose daughter it passed to the family of de Bohun, Earls of Hereford : after remaining in the de Bohun family for some generations it passed, again through the female line, to Thomas of Woodstock in 1371, thence once more through the female line to the Earls of Stafford after 1399, and thence, at the division of the Bohun inheritance in 1421, to King Henry V, who annexed it to the Duchy of Lancaster.1 According to one account 2 it was again granted out by the Crown to the Duke of Buckingham in 1483, but it is doubtful whether this grant, if genuine, ever took effect ; if it did the manor reverted, on the Duke's execution, to the Crown and to the Duchy of Lancaster, with the estates of which it remained thereafter. A fine series 3 of Court Rolls, dating from so early as the reign of Henry III, has faithfully followed these wanderings and is now among the Records of the Duchy of Lancaster at the Public Record Office. Unfortunately for English local history private muni- ments have not always been handed over, when an estate was transferred, so punctiliously or carefully as in the case of these Court Rolls ; as may indeed be seen in the parallel series of Ministers' Accounts, showing the administrative side of the same manor, which survive only from the reign of Richard II,4 and in the even worse fate which appears to have befallen the deeds.
again to the charge and superintendence of the Master of the Rolls by the Record Office Act of 1838. They have now been classed as Archives of the Exchequer (First Fruits and Tenths Division), but one class of them continued in existence after the Act of 1838 (the Bishops Certificates of Institutions and Benefices) and these properly belong to the Archives of the Commissioners. See below (p. 97) Part II, § 6 (/), the remarks on Arrangement : Chief Principle.
1 Cp. Sir W. Hardy, Charters of the Duchy of Lancaster (1845), pp. 179 and 182.
2 Dugdale, Baronage, vol. i, p. 169 ; quoted by G. E. C, Complete Peerage (old and new editions). Dugdale 's statement, however, rests on a sign manual of Richard III, which he saw ' in Castro de Stafford ', and, as in the case of a like document already cited (above, Part I, § 2 (/)), there is no Public Record to sustain it. For the descent of the Manor see P. Morant, History of Essex, vol. ii (Chelmsford, 1816), p. 455.
3 It runs from 33 Henry III {Court Rolls 62/750) to 181 5 {ibid. 77/975) with com- paratively few gaps. Another well-known and fine series is that of the Tooting Court Rolls, now in the possession of the London County Council, which also date from the thirteenth century.
4 Duchy of Lancaster, Ministers'' Accounts, bundles 42 to 52 and 58 to 72.
§ 2 TRANSMISSION OF ARCHIVES 35
(c) Where the function ceases but the Administration goes on. So far there is little difficulty ; but this does not exhaust the possibilities of the case. Let us now suppose that the branch of work to which a certain class of Archives is attached ceases altogether but that other functions of the same office continue. Thus the Court of Common Pleas, which we saw handing over its functions and Archives to the Supreme Court of Judicature, had anciently a method whereby the transference of land from one private person to another could be made a matter of record in the Archives of the Court — the process known as levying a fine, after a fictitious action in the Court — and a corresponding Archive class of Feet of Fines.1 This process, and these Archives, were stopped by Act of Parliament in 1 834, the other functions of the Court of Common Pleas continuing. Here, however, there is again no difficulty. The Head of the Court and his successors continue to hold, as part of their official heritage, these obsolete Archives, the position of which as historical, and indeed as legal, evidence is not impaired by the fact that the Office of Cheirographer, and other offices formerly connected with the process, have ceased to exist.
(d) Where both Administration and Function cease. But now let us suppose that the whole of the functions of an Archive- owning and Archive-making Office cease simultaneously. In this case one of two things may happen. Either the head of the expiring office as a part, duly authenticated, pf his official * winding-up < may transfer his Archives to the custody of some other Archive-keeping official. He may do this under instruction or upon his own initiative. Examples of Archives so transferred are furnished by the case of Copyright Records transferred to the Public Record Office when the Act of 191 1 brought the old Copyright Administration to a close ; and
1 The existing class of these Feet dates from Henry II to William IV. The Record consisted of an indenture in triplicate of which the Court and the two parties preserved each one part. An interesting example of the transmigrations of private muniments is furnished by one or two cases where the muniments of the two parties having for some reason come into the hands of the Crown the Record Office is enabled to put together again the three parts : one instance is reproduced in facsimile in Johnson and Jenkinson, Court Hand Illustrated, Part II, plate XVII (b).
36 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT part n
again, in a still more remarkable degree, by the deposit in the same office of the Archives of an ancient Inn of Court (a private institution) — those of Serjeants' Inn, abolished in 1883. In these cases the Archives pass to a fresh stage of their history in new surroundings and with new connexions ; still, however, without any real break in the continuity of their custody, the Master of the Rolls being the Official Trustee, as it were, of an unlimited number of dead Administrations, statutory heir to their Archive-preserving functions.
Alternatively, as is the fortune of many manorial and other real property Archives in England in these days of extinction of manors and the disuse of ' long title ' to land, such Archives may lie, so to speak, where they have been left and await what fortune has in store for them. In such a case there will soon come a break in the continuity of their Archive history which no subsequent care in preservation can altogether bridge. The question of the fate of private Archives placed in such a predicament is discussed below.
(e) Mixed Cases. It is to be noticed that any two or more of these adventures may befall a single Archive or set of Archives at different stages in its transmission. This will occur particularly when an Archive preserved originally in one con- nexion is later made to serve a different Archive purpose.
Thus a Cartulary of the Abbey of Ramsey,1 after serving its original purpose for two centuries, passed at the Dissolution into the hands of the Cromwell Family, who obtained a portion of the Abbey lands ; it was later produced in evidence in a case in the Court of Exchequer and remained afterwards among the Archives of that Court ; and it has now been transferred, with other Archives of the same Court, to the custody of the Master of the Rolls.2 A similar cartulary of the Abbey of Chertsey is less fortunate and its present archive quality must be held to date only from 1653 when it came to the Exchequer through Sir Henry Spiller, who had recovered it from the hands of 1 Mrs. Coggs of Egham,' who almost certainly had no title to it.3 Cases of change of custody of this kind are particularly common where an
1 Printed in the series of Chronicles and Memorials : see the Introduction to that edition, p. vii.
2 K. R. Misc. Books, No. 28 : the Chertsey Cartulary is No. 25 in the same series.
3 Surrey Record Society, Chertsey Cartulary (London, 1915), p. vi.
§ 2 TRANSMISSION OF ARCHIVES 37
Archive at a more or less late stage of its career is used as a voucher to a Public account x or an exhibit in a suit : and we have also the contrary case where what should have been Public Archives come down to us in private collections,2 but still with a certain Archive quality. Yet another survivor from the dissolution of the Monasteries, the Cartulary of Pershore Abbey,3 owes its present position to a different chain of adventures : it was bought in Fleet Street in 1598 by one William Bell, who has appended a note describing the transaction ; and was subsequently deposited by Fulk Greville with William Mynterne, Keeper of the Records at the Augmentation Office, becoming a Public Record as from June 20th, 1620 : of the transitions from its original owners to Bell and from Bell to Greville nothing is known.
(f) Custody : what is a Responsible Person ? We have seen that the original custodian of Archives is some person connected with the Administration which produced them : we have seen also that the administrative functions and the Archives may be transferred to a totally different administrative authority without the Archives losing their character ; nay, the functions may lapse and the Archives be taken over by some person or office totally unconnected with them and yet the chain of custody remain unbroken.
A final example shows all these processes occurring, that of the African Company :4 in this case the Archives of the first Company (incorporated 1662) passed to the second Company (incorporated 1672), whose collections passed in turn to a third with a quite different constitution (incorporated 1750) : upon the abolition of this last Company by Act of Parliament in 1820 its Archives passed to the Treasury : and they are now in the Public Record Office with the Archives of that Depart- ment.
1 Cp. an Exchequer Case noted in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, vol. xxvi, p. 36. The class of Exchequer Accounts (K. R.) in the Public Record Office is full of such examples.
2 The quality of many of the great collections of State Papers not in the Public Record Office to which the Historical MSS. Commission's Reports introduce us is of course that of private Archives : such are the Cecil Papers still at Hatfield House, the Collections of the Duke of Leeds (mentioned in another connexion below (p. 118) Part II, § 6 (y)), the Elizabethan Musters so frequently found amongst Private Muniments (e. g. those in the Losely MSS. printed by the Surrey Record Society), and many others.
3 Now Augmentation Office, Miscellaneous Books, 61 : see again as to this book, below (p. 120) Part II, § 6 (#).
4 For a note on the Archives of this Company see Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd series, vol. vi, pp. 185 et seqq.
38 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
The question naturally suggests itself, what is the criterion of custody ? It would seem that the custody of any given person or official must not cease without his expressly handing over his functions as Archive-keeper to some other responsible person. But this merely leaves us the task of denning a ' responsible person '.
It is at this point that, for Archive purposes, we must part company with the legal definition of custody.1 The matter is one for a separate section, but an example may make clearer what is the exact point to be discussed. The writer was recently confronted with the case where a Public Librarian had, for the safety of the document, accepted custody of an old Parish Register. Now although from a legal point of view this Archive would certainly have lost evidential value in passing from the custody of its proper guardian, the Rector of the parish, was it not arguable, historically speaking, that if the book had been handed over upon an undertaking that certain forms of custody should be observed its archive quality might be reasonably assumed to be intact ? In point of fact in the particular case instanced the book proved to have been, amongst other adventures, through at least one Sale Room and the question of continuous custody could no longer arise. But in other cases it might — and does — arise, and it will be well for us to be prepared with an answer.
§ 3. What is an Archivist ?
Note to 1937 Edition
The text of this Section has been left as it was published
in IQ22 as an illustration of the development in English
Archive Administration described in the Preface to the
present Edition.
Here, put baldly, is the real point at issue. So far we have classed as an Archivist (by the terms of our definition of
1 See above, Part I, § 2 (/).
§3 WHAT IS AN ARCHIVIST? 39
Archives) either the person who takes over, by himself or his deputy, as part of the legitimate inheritance of an office he fulfils the written memorials of its activities in the past, or, as in the case of an official of the Public Record Office, a person charged with the duty of receiving from the functionaries of (sometimes) expiring other institutions the inheritance for which there will be no direct heir, a kind of Public Trustee. The question now arises — supposing there is neither heir nor any one willing to take the first step of depositing, can the Public Archivist go out of his way and intervene uninvited to save the life and character of the Archives ? More important still, since the official Archivist has very generally his hands full, can any public body, not being an official receiver of other people's Archives, constitute itself an Archivist ad hoc ? And, if so, upon what conditions ?
There are numerous and valuable classes of Archive collection in England, and no doubt elsewhere, in the case of which such action would undoubtedly be desirable, but it will be sufficient to take one as an example. Owing to the modern legislation * by which only proof of ' short title ' is now required in the transference of real property, collections of old deeds formerly preserved for a practical legal purpose (that of showing title) have ceased to have any raison d'etre save an historical one. The result is that they are perishing daily in the lumber rooms of solicitors and the like places ; or, dragged out of those doubtful refuges, are being dismembered, sold (whether to the antique dealer or the glue merchant or the Museum) and dispersed. Merely to save Archives so important for local history by offering them an asylum is a work of piety and usefulness ; but the question may also be raised whether they (and, consequently, any other collections of unwanted Archives which may be found anywhere in a similar plight) can be preserved with full status as Archives.
We make no apology for emphasizing this most important point. Here is no question of legal transfer as in the case of the Common Pleas Records instanced above ; no question of the last
1 The Conveyancing Act of 37, 38 Victoria.
4o RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
official of a vanishing Administration deliberately handing over custody (as in the case of the Copyright Records already cited) to a competent authority, i.e. to one already functioning as an Archive-keeper. It is the case of the Archivist making the first move, intervening in order to preserve : or even of a suitable public body constituting itself an Archivist for the purposes of the case.
It is the undoubted duty of the Official Custodian of Archives which regularly accrue 1 to remind the depositing Administration of his existence from time to time and to offer any useful suggestions.2 The question is — can we also lay it down that a Public Authority not primarily concerned with the keeping of any Archives save its own may declare itself a responsible custodian prepared to take over such archives as those referred to above and not merely to keep them safe but to give them continuous custody ? Such a course may obviously be most desirable, and it seems to the present writer equally obvious that such an authority may perfectly well take it under certain conditions, conditions which will ensure the continuance of such a measure of custody as would have been the portion of the Archives had they been and remained intensely important for the practical purposes of administration.
Let us put down, then, here the conditions which would make a collection of private deeds or papers taken over by (say) a Public Library as safe physically and as secure in their reputation for impartiality and authenticity as the Muniments of the Crown, preserved once in the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer at Westminster and now in the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane.
( i ) There must be reasonable probability of the Authority's own continued existence. Thus a Borough Library or a County Muniment Room is a stable thing : it is hardly conceivable that such Authority should come to a sudden end, without at least handing over its functions to a regular successor.
1 e. g. the Records of the Supreme Court which are deposited at regular intervals at the Public Record Office. * See below, Part IV, § 13.
§§3) 4 WHAT IS AN ARCHIVIST? 41
(2) The Archives must be taken over direct from the original owner or his official heir or representative.
(3) The authority taking over must be prepared to subscribe to the ordinary rules of Archive management directed to the preservation of Archive character. What these are in the matter of safety, custody, and methods of arrangement we have tried to indicate in §§ 5 and 6 of this part of the present work ; but we may notice one in particular here.
(4) In all cases, then, the Authority taking over must be prepared to take over en bloc : there must be no selecting of ' pretty ' specimens.
It is not to be said, of course, that short of these conditions no one may house and preserve documents which would other- wise be derelict ; but it seems clear that, with them, all con- ditions of Archive value may be preserved so far as concerns the Research worker. A good example of the preservation of private collections in some such way as the above is furnished by the case of the Watt Papers now in the Birmingham Free Library. These do not entirely fulfil our conditions, for they were purchased by a private owner when the works closed down about 1893, though up to then custody had been continuous ; and only acquired by the Library in 191 1 . They have, however, been preserved from dispersal. In many counties also the voluntary effort of Local Authorities * or Local Societies is doing something to rescue private muniments from destruction if not always from the loss of their Archive characteristics. If the present note does anything to increase such activities it will have been useful.
§ 4. Archives and Museums
The rule as to taking over en bloc will, it may be feared, be one that rules out Museums in many cases. The British Museum, for example, has a collection of Administrative documents
1 See above in the Preface description of the increase, since this passage was written, in the number of Local Authorities making provision for the preservation of Archives other than those statutorily in their custody.
42 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
which is formed out of the wreck of hundreds of earlier sets of muniments : an interesting, valuable, and beautiful accumula- tion * which is, of course, admirably selected and most carefully conserved. No Archivist could wish (it is almost superfluous to say) for better guardianship or custody than these documents receive. At the same time no Archivist, even in the cases where these documents have been taken over direct from the original owners 2 and custody has consequently been preserved un- broken, could possibly allow full Archive value to documents which have been violently torn from the connexion in which they were originally preserved, a connexion which in nine cases out of ten is important, if not vital, for the full understanding of their significance.
Museums are naturally restricted to preserving Museum specimens and it may be questioned, therefore, whether an ideal arrangement would not be one by which they took over only isolated specimens whose connexions were already lost, leaving the Archivist to deal with all more or less intact col- lections.3 There can be no doubt that the latter should not, if he can help it, take in, by way of gift or otherwise, documents which have not an Archive quality, saving where they are strays which fill gaps in existing series and can be preserved accordingly, with a suitable distinguishing mark,* in company with the others to which they historically belong. Thus the
1 For a general summary of this collection and an explanation of its existence see Sir Frederick Kenyon's note in the Royal Commission on Public Records, First Report, vol. ii (1910), pp. 25, 26.
2 In many cases, of course, they have been obtained through the Sale Room. If an Archivist may venture to offer a suggestion to Museums in general, it would be well if, in their Catalogues, they informed students in every case of the provenance of the documents described.
3 At the time this passage was written I referred to a correspondence in The Times (August 20 and August 23, 1921). Since then the situation has been materially affected by the great development already mentioned of Local Repositories which are prepared to offer a home to private Collections in danger of dispersal. There is good reason to hope that co-operation between these Repositories and the great Museums may do much to solve the problem upon sound lines.
4 At the Public Record Office such recovered strays are stamped with a special inscription ' some time out of custody '.
§ 4 ARCHIVES AND MUSEUMS 43
deposit of the Rodney Papers and the Chatham MSS.1 at the Public Record Office may be justified on the grounds of Archive quality, though in view of the character, strictly relating to Public Administration, of the other Archives preserved there, the policy is perhaps doubtful. There can be no reasonable ground for the gift 2 of a single Saxon charter being made to that office instead of to the British Museum.3
We cannot close this section without a word as to the foreign practice in regard to the matter of which we have been speaking. We have already indicated that one of the main distinctions between English and foreign Archive practice lies in the emphasizing of Custody in this country ; and have given reasons for thinking that this emphasis is by no means undue.4 We are bound therefore to note here that the practice of French, and still more of Belgian, Archivists in the matter of the reception into their Archives of documents of both public and private nature from all kinds of sources goes quite contrary to our doctrine. Not content with receiving deposits of private Archives from their original owners (which, as we have sug- gested, may be a very desirable course under certain conditions) , the Belgian authorities apparently buy isolated specimens on a large scale : their Archives, in fact, represent a kind of com- bination of the British Museum Manuscripts and the Public Record Office Archives. No doubt the accession numbers given to all such accroissements distinguish them adequately, for those who like to probe deeply enough into the Official Reports, from the genuine Archives ; but we cannot help regretting that an Archive Service which is regarded as one of the first in the world should in this matter deviate from one of the chief principles laid down in the Manuel — that for the Archivist, Archive interests should be primary and Historical ones
1 The first were deposited by Mr. Harley Rodney in 1906 ; the second by Admiral Pringle in 1888.
2 There is one such in the ' Miscellaneous ' section of the Deposited Documents.
3 For an early example of a private Archive deposited in a Public Record Office see the case of the Pershore Abbey Cartulary, quoted above, Part II, § 2 (e).
4 Above, Part I, § 2 (/).
44 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
secondary. For with all respect to the eminent authorities of the Belgian Archives, we cannot think that a stray paper from some dispersed family collection, itself picked up in a sale, is a fit inmate for a National Archive Establishment.1
§ 5. The Primary Duties of an Archivist : (i) Physical Defence
of Archives
In dealing with these we must premise that we are con- cerned with the Archivist at present only as a person owing service to the past and to the memorials of the past. What, if any, should be his relations to Administrators now engaged in compiling the Archives of the future or to those who may come after them is a question we shall have to put and answer later. Up to now we are concerned with his duties to the more or less formed collections of Archives that he has already taken over. These duties, it may be recalled, we have already 2 divided into Primary and Secondary : the first being his duties towards the Archives themselves ; the second (to be considered only when the first have been satisfactorily discharged) his duties in the matter of publication and generally making available for use by students. The subject being somewhat long we propose to treat these two varieties of duty under separate sections, and moreover to divide the first again into two parts. In effect it is obvious that duties to the Archives themselves consist in their defence against all kinds of dangers ; but these dangers fall into two clearly defined classes, Physical and Moral. The present section will accordingly treat of the first of these — the Physical ; 3 which are mainly external, i.e. pro- ceeding from sources other than the Archivist himself.
1 See the various sections showing such accessions in Les Archives de VEtat en Belgique pendant la guerre, already cited.
2 Above, Part I, § 5.
3 The literature of the subject is scattered and not easy to find : in particular a bibliography of works on the subject of Library and Repository fittings is a desideratum. Much information will be found in the reports of visits by the Royal Commission (19 10) to Archive centres (see its First Report, part ii) : see also the Guide International des Archives (Paris and Rome, 1935).
The Library Association collects information on this topic and has recently promoted
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 45
6 There is fower-fould hurte ', said Agarde,1 writing in 1610 ' that by negligence may bringe wracke to records ; that is to say Fier, Water, Rates and Mice, Misplacinge.' The summary is not, perhaps, quite complete from a modern point of view, but may serve as a text to our notes on the physical dangers against which Archives are to be defended.
(a) The Repository. From the point of view of safety from fire and damp the Archivist, if he has the supervision of construction, should have, with the modern resources of asbestos, steel, stone, and concrete 2 at his disposal, little difficulty. The chief danger in fact is not lest the building itself, in such a case, should catch fire or suffer from damp but lest neighbouring buildings should catch fire and by their collapse, by flying fragments of flaming material, by the mere heat generated in their burning, or by the water poured in to save them, damage the Repository or its contents. It is easy, in fact, to specify for a fire-proof and damp-proof building, and the Archivist's chief trouble will probably be to secure that the Repository shall be sufficiently isolated from other buildings. At the same time no precautions in the way of fire-fighting 3 apparatus, fire alarms, direct telephonic communication with the Fire Brigade, and a regular Fire Drill for the staff should be omitted.
It seems proper to add here some remarks on protection against attack from the air in war-time : but the current view is that little short of deep subterranean storage would be of any use : 4 and the Archivist, if he is to guard against calamitous
an elaborate investigation in all Library Centres of importance : publication of a sum- mary of its results should be extremely valuable.
1 Sir F. Palgrave, Antient Calendars and Inventories . . . (1836), II, p. 313.
2 Steel, glass and the like may serve also for a considerable part of modern library fittings : though some (including the present writer) are prejudiced in favour of hard wood for shelving (not for the uprights of presses) on account of its greater kindliness and freedom from the tendency to condensation and rust.
3 It should be noted that there is great potential danger to documents from Extincteurs discharging, or leaving a residue of, acid. There is, however, a pattern which discharges only water, and is actuated by compressed air.
4 This remark applies to heavy high-explosive bombs. It is understood that incendiary bombs are, and are likely to remain, of small size and that stout roofs and walls should prevent their penetrating to the interior of the building ; though it would be necessary to protect windows.
46 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
possibilities of this kind, will probably do best to concentrate on plans for evacuating when necessary part or all of his collections to places off the presumed lines of attack.
Heating is best supplied by ducts carrying air which has been passed over heated vanes or water-pipes. Engine rooms should be outside the Repository buildings, and water-pipes, if possible, below ground level and certainly not led through any part of the Repository from which a leakage could conceivably reach the documents : the danger to documents from water, it may be added, is normally much greater (under modern conditions) than the danger from either cold or fire. Electric wiring for heat or lighting must be properly fused ; the wires should be in jointless steel pipes fixed outside the walls ; and the pipes should themselves be earthed to a water main. There should be control switches external to any Repository door for lighting or power points within.
Unauthorized Entry will be provided against if possible by an efficient system of patrolling during off hours and in any case by a very carefully devised system for the custody of keys ; none of which, saving external ones (and those only in the custody of selected officials), should be allowed to go outside the building. At least one person officially connected with the Archives should always be within reach in case of an emergency.1
If the Archivist has not the supervision of construction and must utilize an old building, he must endeavour to incorporate as many of the above features as possible and increase, if possible, all precautions and supervision. He should clearly, in such circumstances, pay particular attention to the question of the accessibility of his more important archives, to schemes for evacuation in case of need (having special regard to windows which can be opened easily, widely and outwards), and to the
1 It follows that in the case of a large Repository there should be an official residence annexed to, though separate from, the Repository. The policy of separating all staff quarters from the Repository is a good one because it renders unnecessary certain restrictions upon the staff in the matter of fires, &c. Except for this reason I am not disposed to consider it so essential as do some authorities ; and it is not always com- patible with convenience in working.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 47
ready availability, for those responsible, of information as to the whereabouts of particular classes of Archives.
(b) The Repository (continued). Of other considerations in the planning of Repositories perhaps the most important is that of Air, which is the best of all preservatives of parchment and paper. If it is absolutely necessary even consideration of Cleanliness must come second. The natural conclusion is that where circumstances permit a ' conditioning ' plant for air should be installed. If this is not done (and there is more than one objection to the scheme x) it should be made possible to secure at will circulation of the air in all directions.2
Light is also valuable, though it is not wise to expose docu- ments too much to the direct rays of the sun because of their possible effect in * fading ' the ink or warping the parchment or paper. Too much sunlight is also definitely harmful to leather.
Cleaning space should always be left on every floor into which documents can be removed while their place is being cleaned, painted, and so forth, and no large collection should be without the installation of a vacuum cleaner, with brush attachment, for the cleansing of the parcels, &c, themselves. The best system of cleaning for a large Repository is one of regular rotation by which one space on each floor is always empty and in process of being cleaned.
Convenience in working should be consulted by the provision, first, of easy means of communication between all parts of the building ; second, of a space (capable of being locked up) reserved for reception, sortation, stamping and numbering ; third, of lifts, in the case of large buildings, placed centrally and capable of accommodating a man and a barrow (a lock-up Lift-Room at top and bottom is also a desirable feature) ; and fourth, of accommodation for students in a like central position.
1 With diffidence (because much scientific opinion is against me) I venture to observe that we have as yet no proof that conditioning air, while it certainly removes elements of danger, does not also remove some elements of positive value.
2 For some description of recent experiments in regard to Air Circulation and the prevention of mildew in English Repositories see Appendix IV. The questions of
racking and make-up are of course affected: see below pp. 49, seq.
48 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
All these things make for a decrease in the handling and a consequent increase in the safety of documents.
(c) The Repository : provision of accommodation for students. Since this subject has been mentioned, it may be worth while to mention one or two notable requirements. Natural light should come, in large quantities, from the left of the reader (so that no shadow is cast by his writing hand) : failing individual tables the ideal would probably be a room having one side almost entirely of windows, from which long narrow tables (with the students' chairs on one side only) should project not quite at right angles, so that every one sat slightly in advance of his left- hand neighbour. Overhead lighting is not desirable x if good side-lighting can be obtained. It is important that handling and rubbing of documents should be minimized, and therefore stands for volumes (and, if possible, special stands for rolls and other particular forms of documents) should be provided and their use made obligatory. Artificial light should take the form of shaded electric lights which can be lowered to within a few inches of the documents. Shelves for Indexes and Reference Books 2 are as obvious a provision as tables and chairs. Other arrangements with regard to the use of Archives by the public are mentioned below.
(d) The Repository : General Plan. We discuss below the question of shelving, but so far as the actual building is con- cerned there is no doubt that the most economical plan is, as a rule, the stack system. By this the space wasted on corridors and party walls is saved, the divisions of the Repository being by floors only. These, however, whether they are iron stages in a single lofty hall or room, or actual ceilings and floors,
1 For Photography on the contrary, and for Repair Work, overhead lighting of the right kind is highly desirable. A roof of the ' weaving shed ' pattern is recommended — a series of angular glass roofs with sides of unequal dimensions ; the larger side in each case having, if possible, a North exposure. This means that in planning a new Repository the Archivist should reserve his top floor for Repairs and Photography. For the latter he would naturally provide also all kinds of electrical installations (see paragraph (n) of this section).
2 A sketch of an Archivist's Minimum Bibliography is given in Appendix II ; and the Archivist's Library will presumably be at the disposal of the Student : but a certain quantity of reference books, constantly needed, must be kept in the Students' Room.
§5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 49
should not be far apart : it is undesirable to have shelves out of easy reach ; because this may lead to the damaging of documents, especially heavy ones, when they are being taken out from a top shelf. Eight feet from floor to ceiling is a good standard.
One thing which militates against the stack system should not be forgotten : that is the possibility that a system of rooms or cells, with stout party walls, might suffer less from a bomb. On the whole authorities, after inclining for a while against this view, seem now to be in favour of it : though they emphasize the fact that some vent to any enclosed strong room would be necessary in order to prevent damage to the general structure of the building from the pressure of gases generated in the confined space. It should also be remembered that if hasty evacuation of part only of a Repository becomes necessary a system of packing in Rooms will facilitate it. One authority l advocates a combination of the two systems for this reason.
The question, of course, arises only in the case of large Repositories.
(e) The Repository : Internal Fitting and Packing. Regretfully, since this book was first written, I have come to the conclusion that in most cases the combined necessity for air circulation,2 for a standard size in shelving and for easy handling by persons who may not be very skilled or very careful 3 is against the system of presses running out on rails into a central gangway when their contents are required ; and is, moreover, against very close packing. After some years of experiment in large Repositories full of parcels, boxes and volumes of varying sizes, shapes and kinds, I have been led to the uncomfortable con- clusion that one cannot hope to fill half the available cubic space with racking : and that in many cases the cubic space of the racking itself, when packed, will also not be half filled : actually I know a number of well-packed rooms where not more than one-fifth of the total cubic space is occupied by
1 The present Archiviste General at Brussels, M. Brouwers.
2 See Appendix IV.
3 In a small Repository where the Archivist will do his own ' producing ' of docu- ments these considerations would of course be modified.
5o RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
documents. In small Repositories, where the depth of shelves could be individually adapted to the documents to be housed this proportion could be considerably increased : but in any case the Archivist should be warned against hoping too much from the amount of space he has available for racking and from the amount of racking he has available for filling.
The best alternative to a moveable-rack system will be one in which the walls may be lined with shelves in the old- fashioned way if space allows, but the bulk of the room-space will be filled with rectangular islands of double shelves back to back ; the islands being parallel to each other and separated by passages of a suitable width ; and a cross passage at one end (if possible one at each end) giving communication from one passage to another. Unless the dimensions of the room are specially designed beforehand in view of proposed racking of a given depth, the details of arrangement cannot be made subject to a fixed rule. But in general one may say that given a room with windows on one side and a door facing them the presses should be at right-angles to these walls ; that each of the passages between them should start from a window ; and that the door should open straight on to one of the passages. The width of these passages should be not much less than three feet, to allow space for a man with a truck and to leave room for the pulling out of large packages from the shelves.1 The staircase to an upper floor is generally best placed against a wall : it should be straight, not much less than three feet in width and having treads of about nine inches and rises of seven. Mezzanine floors should if possible be of grating form to allow of vertical movement of air. Lighting should be in trough reflectors fixed to the ceiling (or the underside of a mezzanine floor) and angled to light the shelves from top to bottom.
For the general construction of the racking (uprights, connecting pieces and shelf bearers) there seems to be, until stainless steel becomes cheaper, no alternative to painted steel or iron : the ends and backs of the presses being of some form
1 Abnormally deep shelving would of course require correspondingly broadened passages.
§5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 51
of sheeting pierced with holes * for ventilation. The choice of material and form for the shelves is another matter and as it is affected by more than one consideration I have made it the subject of an Appendix : 2 here we need only add that for the convenience of interchangeability a standard span (three feet) and depth (fourteen inches 3) are suggested, at least in the case of a large Repository.
(/) The Make-up of Documents, We reach at this point a subject one side of which (the arrangement of documents from the point of view of packing convenience) remains to be dis- cussed below under the heading of Arrangement and Classification. But there are certain simple facts which may be stated here. The chief difficulty lies in reconciling the necessity of letting in air with the necessity (in such places as London, particularly) of keeping out dirt in the form of dust. Different shapes and forms of documents lend themselves to a greater or less degree to boxing and enveloping and in some instances it may be necessary to choose between cleanliness and air, in which case air must have the first place. As a rule, however, it is possible to meet both : giving at the same time due consideration to a third very important matter — ease in production, possibly by unskilled hands.
Since this book was first written a good deal of further experiment has been made : but while I think this justifies the re-writing of the present section at some length so as to include detailed description of certain types of make-up which have been proved to be reasonably efficient, I would add that fresh experience has strengthened my conviction that this subject can never be treated definitely, because new materials and forms continue and will continue to appear and because the
1 Care must be taken that it is not scratchy.
2 Appendix III (a). For convenience I have added also specifications for a form of general service racking which has proved convenient in practice : and for racks to take outsize documents and very long rolls (see below division (/) of this section) : the use of the latter would, of course, mean some modification in the planning of a room into which they were to be introduced.
3 This means of course that a double press with the back taken out will give us 28 in. shelving for outsize packages.
52 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
number of special cases which require ad hoc treatment will always be considerable. It is possible, however, to prescribe certain common forms which (perhaps with variation of the materials used) should continue to be adequate for a vast number of ordinary cases and should serve also as basis for the devising of ad hoc arrangements for abnormals. The four principal types of documents to be treated are Rolls, Outsize Documents of all kinds, Loose Documents (falling into several sub- divisions) and Volumes. The chief general considerations to be borne in mind (apart from the questions of air and cleanliness) are first that while folding in one direction may in some cases do little harm to paper or parchment a second folding across the line of the first must ultimately cause deterioration, even if the document is never used ; secondly that the Archivist's chief problem is generally bulk — he cannot give his documents that individual treatment which he would like to give them and which they would receive if they were a handful of specimens in a small Museum ; thirdly that if individual documents out of a number kept in a single receptacle are to be taken out for ' production ' to Students then the larger the receptacle, and the larger the number of its contents, the greater the risk of carelessness (leading to damage or misplacement) by the mem- ber of the Staff who ' produces ' ; x and finally that if the whole box is to be ' produced ' in the Students' Room then again the larger the number of individual documents thus given out together the greater will be the difficulties of preventing care- lessness or malpractice on the part of the Students.
Before going on to deal with particular types of document we may add here some remarks about a kind of receptacle which we shall have occasion to recommend in more than one connexion — the light box.
The chief considerations which operate in the choice of material for this are that it should be strong and light, free from acid content which might have an ill effect on the documents placed in it, and capable of bending up on a scored line to make
1 Experience since this book was first written has led to an increased emphasis on this importance of a small type of receptacle.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 53
joints which will be both better and cheaper than the artificial joint of two pieces fastened together at an angle. The material which at the time of writing is the best known from these points of view is that called in England ' leatherboard ' ; 1 and a specification for boxes made of this is given in Appendix III (b). The great advantage of this pattern is that the boxes (which should not be more than five inches in depth 2) , being rectangular in section, pack well on their edges,3 resting either on their shorter or longer side, and can conveniently be labelled with pasted-on numbers on the exposed edge. Note that they should always be packed full : 4 the contained documents being thus kept in shape by pressure from the lid of the box there is no need for tight packing of the boxes on the shelf and indeed a few inches of space should always be left on each shelf so that the producer can get his fingers on each side of any box he wants to pull out. One more general remark : if a quantity of documents separately numbered are to be enclosed in a single box that quantity should if possible be a multiple of five or ten. Rolls (i.e. true Rolls, consisting of sheets of paper or parch- ment fastened head to tail) may be mounted at one end on a ' guard ' of fine unbleached linen. 5 This linen is then pasted round a one-inch cardboard cylinder or wooden roller ; care being taken to get it quite true, so that the document will automatically roll up straight and tight on to this central core. At the other end of the roll a similar linen guard, with a tape, will serve as outer cover or the roll may simply be taped round
1 It is not suggested that this material is ideal : its life, for instance, is probably not more than 20 years in some cases. But it is the best cheap material I know. The better qualities have a glazed surface.
8 It is better not to exceed four, which is quite sufficient thickness to be gripped by a hand of normal size : the danger is that an impatient ' producer ' may catch hold of the lid by its edge in order to pull the box out. It is a good plan to tie or buckle round very heavy boxes a piece of broad tape or webbing with a loop in it to pull the box out by.
3 i. e. the box, when closed, is turned half over and stood on one of what, when it was open, would be its vertical walls : it is not normally stored on the flat.
4 It follows, of course, that the Archivist should keep in stock boxes of varying depth. If for any reason a full box is not possible, a tape may be passed through holes in the base of the box and the document or documents tied down.
6 The weave known as aeroplane fabric is very suitable.
54 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
and dropped into a standard pattern leather board box of square section ; or, for economy, a number of rolls may be placed in a larger box.
Documents of the Plea Roll type (a number of long mem- branes piled one on top of the other and fastened together at the head) may be treated in the same way, provided the membranes composing it are few. Alternatively they may be fastened through guards at their head to one edge of a stiff card board half the size of the longest membrane. The opposite edge of this card is let into a slit down one side of a small cardboard cylinder x and when this contrivance is in position the roll may be turned over it and tied, forming a convenient package half its natural size without any danger of a crease at the place where it is folded. Where the membranes are too numerous for either of these methods to be applicable one of the portfolio forms described in Appendix III (d) may be adapted to suit.
Outsize Documents. The presence of individual documents of this description among smaller ones — a large map, for instance, folded many times in order to be bound into a volume : or a large Royal grant, with seal, forming part of a Series the rest of which consists of small Deeds — is one of the cases where removal of a document from its proper place is justified in the interest of its preservation : it must of course be replaced by a dummy to explain whither it has been transferred and itself marked with a note to shew whence it came. All this, however, does not affect the problem of its packing, in regard to which we may suggest three main lines of procedure. A document of this kind may be folded once or twice in the way described above in connexion with Plea Rolls (this is the least desirable way and only feasible if the document is comparatively narrow), or it may be kept flat, or it may be rolled.
The limit up to which outsize documents of a normal kind 2
1 It is best to cover the whole of the board and cylinder thus combined with linen or paper pasted on.
2 A quite abnormal document, such as one at the Public Record Office, among the Commonwealth Exchequer Papers, which has about 900 applied seals on it, may of course have a special case built for it.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 55
may be kept flat is that of the size up to which folders for it can be made which will be reasonably light and yet rigid enough to be pushed on to the shelves of a special rack * such as is described in Appendix III (a) : a reasonably practicable folder or portfolio to contain as many as ten such documents 2 can be made of a thin pulp or strawboard as large as 40 inches by 30 inches : and this will cover any document without seals which normally occurs.3
Documents too large for the above may be guarded at each end with unbleached linen, or mounted on linen projecting beyond the two ends : the surplus linen at one end is then wrapped round and pasted to a four-inch strawboard cylinder slightly longer than the width of the document, in the manner prescribed above for Rolls ; that at the other serves as a cover after the document has been rolled up and has tapes attached to tie round : it is a good plan to cut the linen at this outer end to a breadth several inches greater than the length of the cylinder so that the projecting portions of linen, when all is rolled up, can be turned over and tucked inside the cylinder.4 Loose Documents. Apart from special cases, with which we cannot attempt to deal, these may be divided into four principal types :
(i) the completely miscellaneous ; where we have, for instance, half a dozen small rolls, ten pieces of parch- ment of varying sizes, three original files of small writs, and a book ; the whole forming a single unit : (ii) documents of the ' Deed ' type — one of the commonest
of problems for the local Archivist : (iii) specially fragile documents — notably those with seals ; and
1 I have discarded, after experiment, the idea of an architect's plan cabinet with drawers because to be economical one has normally to put so many documents in a single drawer that production becomes a difficult if not dangerous operation.
2 It is better of course to use one folder for each document : or alternatively each may be put in a limp folder of manilla, such as is described in Appendix III (d), and a number thus wrapped may be put in the stouter folder or portfolio (ibid.).
3 Specifications for the manufacture of this, and of a more elaborate board with buckram flaps for use with documents having appended Seals, are given in Appendix III (d).
4 A simple racking for such rolls is described in Appendix III (a).
56 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
(iv) collections of leaves of more or less the same size, and that not unreasonably large, such as a series of foolscap files from a modern office. Generally speaking this type consist of paper documents.
In regard to (i) we can only recommend in general that the documents should be packed in boxes ; that so far as possible they should be ' produced ' singly, by their individual (sub-) numbers and not by the box ; and that in the interest both of packing and production large boxes, taking a considerable number of documents, should not be used. It may sometimes be found convenient to segregate the different forms within a single box, putting all the single flat leaves together : in this case it is a good plan to paste in the lid a list of the contents of the box shewing the form of each document, so as to facilitate production.
In the case of (ii) (parchment Deeds and similar documents) there is an accepted method which has stood the test of time — the use of square flapless envelopes of cartridge, manilla or linen- backed paper ; each envelope and the document contained in it being numbered and a suitable quantity of them standing, like the cards in a card-index, in a box constructed to fit them. Many deeds have to be folded for this form of packing but no harm will be done if the folds are made in the same direction and not heavily creased : and seals, if appended, may be turned back so as to pack between the folds. This system makes the ' production ' of individuals easy even if fifty or more are stored in one box ; and if they are not packed too tightly (not more than three-quarters of capacity is a good rule x) it will be found that by expansion they automatically keep themselves from shifting and prevent pressure on the seals 2 which occur so frequently on this type of document. Where the seals are particularly fragile a shallow square cardboard box of the same size may be substituted for the envelope.3
1 i. e. not more than three-quarters of the box is filled when the documents in their envelopes are squeezed tightly together.
2 Appended seals, if the document is folded, may be turned over so as to lie between the folds.
3 This without prejudice to other methods suggested for the protection of seals.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 57
The only question is — what size shall the envelope be ? In view of the enormous increase in the size of later deeds some Archivists favour the use of two or even three series of envelopes (and boxes) of different size : if, for convenience, the Archivist compromises on a single series of medium size (say 8 inches square *) he will find it wise to enclose very small early deeds in a doubled leaf of stout paper just small enough to push into the envelope.
(iii) The packing of documents with seals (together with the taking of moulds and casts) has been dealt with elsewhere 2 but a few points may be mentioned. The object of the Archivist in regard to seals applied to the face of the document (whatever their period and material — whether they are of true wax, shellac, or papered wafer) is to prevent pressure or bending. In the case of seals appended there is special danger owing to their weight and the ease with which they may be accidentally knocked : it is also desirable when the seal is large to take the weight off the tongue, tag or laces by which it hangs.
Various methods of meeting these difficulties are described in the article mentioned : a pad or wrapping of cotton-wool in waxed tissue or grease-proof paper is nearly always valuable ; a cardboard box 3 holding a large appended seal may itself be attached to the document, or to a stiffened folder containing the document, by a tape slightly shorter than the attachment of the seal ; a single document with delicate applied seal (even if it be a leaf in a book 4) may by a little contrivance be attached to a thin sheet of cardboard of the same size, or a smaller piece of cardboard may be attached to the back of the document,5 so as to secure the desired rigidity ; a layer of cardboard with a hole in it, fastened over or round the seal may obviate pressure ;
1 For small early deeds 6 inches is generally large enough.
2 See below, division (w) of this section and articles there cited.
3 Contemporary ' skippets ' of metal or other material should of course be left in situ if possible : but if they are of iron precautions must be taken, by means of wrappings or boxes enclosing them, to prevent injury to the document from rust.
4 In this case the board will have a small hinged piece fastened to the side of the sheet next the back. Seals on a Treaty in book form have been successfully treated in this way.
5 For instance, I have sometimes had a square of thin cardboard, about twice the dimensions of an applied seal, fastened to the back of a document.
58 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING parth
and so on. Remain always a number of examples to be treated by ad hoc methods. But one device may be mentioned as particularly convenient not only for seals but for all kinds of delicate small documents — the tray. A series of these, piled one on the top of another, give the equivalent of a large box unit ; and not only prevent pressure on the documents but also make those packed lowest as easily accessible as those at the top. The system is perfectly safe, and reasonably inexpensive, if the trays are properly made.1
(iv) Touching this class of loose documents (which includes the vast majority of Archives produced by modern Offices) we may premise that their preservation in the ' loose ' state after they reach the Archive condition is most undesirable from every point of view : to pick out from a really large mass of papers the particular document — or more often a large number of particular documents — which the student desires to see involves a great deal of not unskilled labour ; and on the other hand to produce large bundles of loose papers and let the student find for himself what he wants is to invite damage and misplacement, if not worse. There is no doubt that the proper course is to make up documents in units of a tolerable size and in a manner which will safeguard the documents against a careless or unscrupulous student ; and this means that they must be fastened together tightly at more than one place on their left edge. The old way of doing this was to bind in volumes; the method to be advocated here is that known at the Public Record Office 2 as filing, where a pile of documents (including material to form a cover) is stabbed vertically with a series of holes (generally five, or seven, or two sets of three) in its left margin and laced up through these with strong cord.3 The unit thus created, or a number of units, is then stored in a suitable box.
We may here interpolate the remark that the file in the old
1 A specification is given in Appendix III (c).
2 The method has three advantages over binding : it is cheaper, it gives better protec- tion, and if the papers are found to require re-arrangement a file (unlike a volume) can be easily taken to pieces and put together again.
3 A description of this process in more detail is given in Appendix III (e).
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 59
sense of that word (i. e. a quantity of documents strung together on a string or wire passing through a hole in the centre of them) not infrequently survives from early times. Often it has been broken up : often, too, in the interest of the student (and of the documents) it may have to be broken up deliberately ; its contents becoming to all intents and purposes ' loose docu- ments \ Note that this breaking up should not be done if it can be avoided and that most meticulous notes must be made of the precise nature of the ' filing ', the holes used, and so • forth.
For either of these operations the documents ought to be mounted on guards,1 for they should not themselves be pierced : this adds considerably to the cost of the process but if it is not done we shall have to resort (in the case of binding) to the plan of whip-stitching single sheets into gatherings for sewing, which has many objections,2 while filing will be impossible unless we can be sure that all the leaves have a blank margin of i| inches.3
Unfortunately the enormous bulk of modern Archive accu- mulations makes it sometimes inevitable that the considerations just adduced should go by the board : moreover there are cases (where, for instance, fees are to be charged, or where only a proportion of a given class of documents is open to inspection) in which ' production ' must be either by single documents or by small units unsatisfactorily strung together in the Office in which they originated. Under such circumstances preservation in the loose state becomes unavoidable : and as a pis aller therefore we may suggest that the documents, in fives or tens if they are all singles, or in any units in which they were strung together in their originating office, should be enclosed in manilla folders,4
1 For methods of rapid and efficient guarding see Douglas Cockerell, Bookbinding and the Care of Books (1901).
2 For one thing it rules out or should the ' spring back ' type of binding : and even if ordinary ' stationery style ' is used experience has shewn that whip-stitched leaves tend to break away from the sewing in use.
3 It may be remarked in passing that the habit of writing in the margin is so ingrained in some persons that nothing short of a greased or blackened margin would restrain them : moreover many of the papers preserved in any given Office are received from outside sources over whose methods the recipient has naturally no control.
4 A pattern is suggested in Appendix III (d).
60 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part h
numbered to correspond with their contents ; and that a suitable number of folders (fives or tens again, if possible, to facilitate c production ') should then be packed in a leather- board box. The Archivist who has to accept from time to time quantities of papers of this description may save himself much trouble if he can persuade the executive branch to adopt a method of stringing together related papers through at least two holes x on the left side and perhaps even to pack its papers itself, sometime before their transfer, in the folders and boxes described. He may also safeguard himself if he can secure that a list of the numbers alleged to be in each box shall be pasted inside the lid.2
It will be noted that we have left out of account here all forms of parcelling. The fact is that present-day experience shews boxes to be as cheap as, or even cheaper than, any parcelling material other than paper ; equally lasting ; more efficient in protecting the documents ; giving more ready access to their contents ; and (being rectangular) easier to pack. They also lend themselves better to labelling — a question of some importance with which we shall deal below. There is so far as we know only one limitation to their use — that of size. The Archivist who has the misfortune to be saddled with loose flat documents measuring much more than 18 inches in length or breadth 3 in quantities such that he cannot deal with them in the manner described under Outsize Documents above will have to fall back on some form of portfolio having at least one stiff side, probably of stout millboard, such as we describe in Appendix III (d). He will be wise to subdivide the contents of these also (for their own safety and for facility of production) by placing fives or tens in manilla folders of similar pattern (but heavier material) to those recommended for use inside the boxes.
1 The practice, common in modern Offices, of ' filing ' papers through a single hole in one cover is objectionable not only because a paper may be so easily detached by a sharp pull but because single leaves tend to project at all angles from the front of the ' file ' and become creased and broken.
1 He should then make a rule that on the first occasion when such a box is opened in his own department the list shall be checked through and a note of the fact made on it.
3 Such, for instance, as the Chancery Proceedings (numbering probably over a million) at the Public Record Office.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 61
Volumes. These fall into two divisions :
(i) volumes made from a collection of individual docu- ments; and
(ii) true volumes made up of gatherings of folded sheets designed for binding, whether the actual binding was done before or (a not infrequent occurrence) after the writing.1
It will have been observed that we do not favour the first of these forms : and though economy may demand that a book of this kind, if the sewing is in good condition, should be left as it stands, the opportunity should normally be taken, whenever it requires repair, to put it into the more suitable ' file ' form : though naturally careful record should be kept (including specimens of the material) to shew the form in which it was previously made up.2
The ' true ' volume is in quite another category. Here the book form is part of the original Archive character and should be carefully preserved : see below the separate notes on Binding. 3
There is one borderline case. In some instances where a number of small books are bound up into a larger volume it may be argued that this larger binding is characteristic and should be preserved. This is certainly the fact in the instance of some limp vellum volumes of annual Accounts preserved by the Grocers' Company, a quantity of which were periodically ' tacketted ' just as they stood, without new sewing or any other modification, into a vellum case. On the other hand large masses of the Admiralty Logs — made in small limp pro forma
1 Blank books supplied by the Stationers ready for writing begin to occur as soon as paper becomes plentiful — in the latter part of the 15th century.
An amusing instance of the relation between binder and writer was noted recently in the case of a Court Book belonging to the Borough of Dover. The Sewer apparently designed this to stand on a shelf : the Clerks used it as a Ledger (i. e. a book which is kept in a horizontal position) and had it furnished with a flap and clasps; and since they wanted to keep these out of the way on the left, used it upside down.
2 Even early bindings must generally, in the interest of the documents they contain, be treated in this way. Thus, quite early in their history at the State Paper Office, quantities of loose papers in the Colonial series were made up, without being guarded, into vellum volumes : with the result that sewing at the backs of the leaves, and folding at the fore-edge have played havoc with many of them. In repair these are guarded and filed, the characteristic vellum sides and back of the casing being filed with them.
3 Division (/) of this section.
62 RULES FOR ARCHIVE KEEPING part n
books of varying sizes — were subsequently made up at the Admiralty into larger volumes without any regard to suitability ; and have latterly been reduced to their original state and boxed. The memory of the Admiralty make-up is preserved in their numeration and in portions of the binding material (including all stamps and lettering pieces) which are securely made up with them in their latest form.
(g) Handling and damage. A considerable number of dangers have to be faced in connexion with the use of Archives by students : assuming that the Archivist himself is invariably above reproach he yet cannot expect the same carefulness in all the students who use Archives. To forbid smoking is an obvious precaution. To forbid ink is not so invariably a rule ; x and in fact it may be well to defend this regulation by pointing out that even fountain-pens and stylographs of the best makes in the most careful hands sometimes blot and that one blot may be infinitely disastrous. Students are apt to discredit this last suggestion and should have their attention directed to the tale of Paul-Louis Courier and the MS. of Daphnis and Chloe : it would be indiscreet to quote a more modern example. Recent experience would induce me to exclude also the purple ' indelible ' pencil from all use in Archives : if only on account of the danger of the dust from its sharpening. The marking of Archives with any form of writing is dealt with below, this being a danger which goes beyond the mere physical defacement ; but of course it should be absolutely forbidden to students.2 Should a mark of some kind be made, in spite of all precautions, on an Archive, the Archivist has two courses open to him. Either he may invoke the aid of an expert chemist, who will very possibly be able to remove it, or he may attach to the Archives a statement authenticated by signature and date of what has occurred. He will probably find it wisest of all to combine the two procedures.3
1 Its use is permitted, for example, in the Archives Nationales at Paris and in the British Museum.
2 Even in the case of a Library of Printed Books of any value it is usual to make such an offence, wilfully committed, carry with it the penalty of exclusion.
3 We have had occasion more than once to point out the usefulness of the authen- ticated and dated note by an Archivist concerning any archive peculiarity observed by him in any of his charges. The practice of former Archivists shows that the value
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 63
In the turning of pages and the like incidents of handling some people apparently find it impossible to be careful : against such dangers the Archivist has little shield except the most complete supervision possible, the enforcement by every means of regulations as to the immediate reporting of all accidents, the prevention of all unnecessary touching by means of proper stands 1 and suitably covered weights, and a jealously guarded rule by which he may at his discretion refuse to produce any document on the ground of its physical state. It is probable that the extended use of photographic facilities,2 which make the production of photographic copies easy and inexpensive, will do much to help in the preservation of Archives.
(h) Theft. Against this and other ill practices of students — the actual commission of which would not be difficult where the document in question was small and the Students' Room large and full of workers — the Archivist has, apart from supervision, and moral deterrents, little defence : though supervision, if it includes the careful preservation of record of every person who studies Archives and the documents to which he or she has had access, may be made tolerably adequate. It may be well to
of this habit has been generally appreciated. Thus in what is now known as Coram Rege Roll 352, at the Public Record Office, Membrane 131 b (dorse) ends with the words ' plus de isto placito in rotulo sequenti ' : to this is added a note ' set in anno domini 1604 cum hoc record urn abbreuiavi non patet ubi hie Rotulus est nee aliquod signum ubi consui debet de quo miror multum. Arm' Agarde.'
I am indebted for this pleasant example to Professor Ehrlich, of the University of Lwow. An even earlier private example is afforded by a note in a fourteenth-century hand attached to a fragmentary document belonging to Winchester College, which the Bursar of the College, Mr. Herbert Chitty, was good enough to show me : ' in hoc sacculo continetur carta. R. dei gracia Regis Anglie . . . cum partibus minutis sigilli regit confracti et carta est in parte putrefacta quo minus legi potest.' Such annotation is, of course, not uncommon ; but the Archivist should make it frequent : anything outside the most ordinary routine of conservation and use deserves noting.
1 See above (p. 48), § 5 (c). No student should under any circumstance be allowed to write on paper placed on the document except for purpose of tracing, which should only be done by special permission and with special precautions for the use of a soft pencil.
2 The Photostat machine, working by electric light, produces negatives on sensitized paper : but cheaper and much more rapid devices using cinema film are now being perfected. A student working recently with one of these made easily in one day over 1 000 tiny negatives to be used later with a projecting lantern.
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add here that if only as a technical guarantee supervision must include always the presence of an official of the Archive depart- ment in the Students' Room during the whole time it is in use. As regards theft in particular — the Archivist can at least make it unprofitable by a systematic stamping of every detached (or readily detachable) leaf or membrane ' produced ' with a metal stamp and printer's ink.1 He must remember, however, that this is not an absolute defence because it is unlikely that any ordinary thief would trouble to steal articles so unsaleable as most Archives.
In fact (it is worth stressing) the person against whom we are
to guard is not as a rule the ordinary criminal but the abnormally
minded ' Student '.
Obviously if we can dispense with the ' production ' of those ' loose ' documents to whose make-up (or lack of it) we took ex- ception above we shall have increased security : nor indeed should any student be allowed to have at the same time such a number of single documents (even though each has a separate reference) as would make checking difficult when they were returned. These rules are by no means invariably enforced, but they are good ones. And in any case every student should be required to give a separate signed request for every Archive having a separate number.
It has seemed hardly necessary to enlarge here upon the necessity that every student admitted to study Archives should be in some way accredited : nor to deal with the various systems2 under which he may ask for and have produced to him the Archives he requires. Forms of request and systems of produc- tion are many. In some large foreign Archives, for example, the system is more complicated and makes more demands upon both Archivist and Student than that in force at the Public Record Office : and on the other hand a small local Repository would not require anything like the safeguards in use at Chancery Lane. So long as the necessity for supervision is well under- stood and so long as the rule enunciated in the next section
1 On this subject see also below, Part IV, § 2 (d).
2 Accounts of these will be found in Royal Commission (1910), First Report, Part II.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 65
(that there must be a signature for every stage in the pro- duction of an Archive from its place in the repository to the student) is strictly enforced, the Archivist may be left to evolve for himself the most simple system his special circumstances permit. It is unlikely, however, that any Students' Room, even the most modest, will be able to dispense with a Register shewing, chronologically, all ' productions ' of documents to Students.
(i) Misplacing. This question of the student's use of Archives may lead us to speak of the last of Agarde's dangers ; x though doubtless he meant more by the word than its literal sense. The efficient administration of Archives involves a system for their ' production ', whether on a small or large scale. The only one which is safe is one like that of a registered letter, by which no Archive passes from its place on the shelves without a signature being given for every hand which touches it on the way ; its place being taken in the repository during its absence by a card, large and stout enough not to be lost, bearing its reference and the date and particulars of its removal including the identity of the remover. Its return is simply a reversal of the stages, many or few, through which it passes on its way out. 2 Simplification, then, of the process of 6 production ' in a large Office can only be by reduction of the number of these stages, not by the omission of any of the precautions in the way of signature.
One thing more. When documents ' produced ' have been returned to the repository the cards which during their absence had replaced them on the shelves should not be destroyed but arranged in the order of the documents themselves to form a card index of ' production '. Experience has shewn that this ' production ' history of the Archives is not only useful in itself
1 Cp. a note by him, quoted above, as to a missing membrane.
2 The misplacement of a document in any large collection is so serious an incon- venience (it may be the work of many days to put the error right) that it is well to have the strictest rules in force on this subject : for example any one engaged on the replacing of documents should make it a rule that once he has withdrawn a card from the shelf the document it represents must be replaced before another card is touched.
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but valuable because the knowledge of its existence promotes a spirit of carefulness in those whose work it is to produce and replace and whose personal connexion with these operations is thus permanently registered.
(j) Labels, This subject, though it did not receive separate treatment in my first edition, deserves an interpolation here : if only because clear labelling is obviously one of the best defences against misplacing of a certain kind. We shall see later * that any Archive's description is separable into three divisions for which we shall suggest abbreviations taking the form of letters and numbers. Here we need only point out the con- venience of a settled and homogeneous system of displaying these devices on the documents or their containers : there will be much less chance of mistake if the same piece of information (the number, for instance, of a document in its series) is always conveyed, so far as labels are concerned, by the use of the same colour, the same position, the same type and the same shape.2 In large Repositories these mechanical aids are really impor- tant ; and they are always convenient.3
For most of the forms of make-up here recommended ' stick- on ' labels are suitable, and are the best. For economy they should be printed in sheets and for utility cut out from these with hollow punches having a cutting edge which forms a rectangle with rounded corners — labels so cut will stick better. Where c tie-on ', or ' tag ', labels are necessitated by the nature of the make-up the best pure rope manilla is recom- mended as a material, with brass eyelets.
(k) Repairs.
This is another matter directly connected with production : for while repairs, if the Archive collection is an old one,
1 See below Part II § 6 (pp. 99, 100).
2 At the Record Office, for example, when the back of a volume is to be labelled the first two parts of the reference are given in labels printed in scarlet and placed at the head, the third in black-printed labels placed at the tail.
3 I have spoken here of the regular (reference) labels. Any abnormal ones (such as a label indicating that a particular document is to have special treatment) will obviously require to be distinguished from these (and from each other) by colour, shape, etc.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 67
should be systematically conducted by classes, where the need for them is noticed in individual cases as single docu- ments are produced these should be dealt with, if possible, forthwith. To meet the requirements of ' custody ' repair of Archives involves the presence, temporary or permanent, of a skilled repairer on the staff — or working under the supervision of the staff — officially connected with the administration of the repository concerned. Speaking generally we may say that in a large repository the amount of repairing work to be done will be so great that our object must be, while sacrificing no element of efficiency and safety, to secure the greatest possible economy and speed in working.
The question of the extent to which the amateur, with a modest outfit of tools, may attempt the repair of paper and parchment documents was the subject of a recent article in the Proceedings x of the British Records Association ; and some of the remarks made there may for convenience be repeated here from a different angle. Naturally if work on a larger scale is to be attempted, and by hands other than those of the Archivist himself, one new question arises — that of supervision. But apart from this and the fact that the professional will undertake larger and more difficult operations than the amateur and consequently require an extended outfit of tools 2 and machinery 3 we may take it that the same conditions, resulting in the same principles and rules, will govern the work of both. In general it is to be observed that anyone who is neat-fingered in the ordinary affairs of life can, if he or she chooses to give the necessary time to practice, make a reasonably good repairer : such an one may be advised, once he or she has mastered the
1 No. 1, 1936 : also printed separately. I have appended to this an abstract of the programme of a demonstration organized for the same body because the operations shewn on that occasion are described : and this is given in a different form below.
2 To take a single instance the piercing of the guards in the filing process recommended above for loose papers will be done by the amateur with a hand-drill : but the quantity of filing to be done at the Record Office has made it worth while to install an electrical one.
3 Notably heavy presses, machines for the speedier cutting up of large quantities of repairing material, and (if binding is contemplated) the special presses, etc., required for that work.
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first principles, to watch, if possible, a skilled repairer at work — at any rate to examine closely a properly repaired document — and then to accumulate a small kit and some valueless fragments of documents (if possible of varying date and character) and set out to gain practical experience. It is wise to begin with paper rather than parchment.
Principle and Rules of work. The aim of the Archivist is to hand on to future generations the documents confided to him with no diminution in their evidential value : accordingly he has to guard against the destruction not only of those elements whose value as evidence is obvious to him but also of those whose value he does not perceive. A good example of evidence the value of which (now recognized) has been disregarded in the past is furnished by the holes made in sewing.1
The Repairer then, it may be laid down, should endeavour to put nothing into his Archives which was not there when he received it and to take away nothing which was : and this principle applies not only to tangible things — the material of his document — but to intangible — its qualities. Obviously there will be occasions (when, for instance, his document has a large hole in it) which make an exact observation of this principle impossible : but he will come near to it if he follows two rules :
(i) so far as possible to replace missing material by material of the same kind ; and
(ii) in every instance where what he has done in repair might escape observation to append a signed and dated explanatory note : 2 he must on no account cover his tracks.
Materials. Little need be added to what we have just said : but it should be noted that the quality as well as the character
1 It should be a rule in every repairing department that sewing of the actual fabric of Records should not be practised except in replacement of old sewing and should then be through the original holes. There is no evidence which can on occasion be more valuable than that of old sewing holes : and none which it is easier to confuse or destroy.
2 To this will be added, if necessary, specimens : for instance, as noted above, a discarded form of binding may be thus represented.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 69
of any new material which is to be used must be equated to that of the old : we want the two to be affected by all the conditions which do affect documents (humidity, for example) in the same way. We should also, while counselling the Archivist to make the fullest use of any advice that the Chemist can give him, warn him in regard to modern materials that no laboratory test can tell us what the effect of time will be on materials x and that the unique character of Archives makes unjustifiable anything in the nature of experiment in regard to them except where all known methods of treatment have failed (for instance) to arrest decay.2
Actually there is, as a rule, little difficulty in obtaining what is necessary : parchment and vellum, made in much the same way as formerly, can still be obtained ; Western papers till the latter part of the last century were nearly all made of rag and sized with animal size, and such paper also is not unobtain- able ; and the materials of medieval and later sealing c waxes ' 3 are known and can be copied. The method of applying the first three of these generally shews automatically what the Repairer has done and in seals the same result can be obtained by using deliberately a different colour in repair. Where a document is only decayed (i. e. when no part is visibly missing or torn) what the Repairer has to supply is the animal size, which in the vast majority of cases (whether the material is parchment or paper) is what the action of either fungus or bacteria has destroyed.4 Size should be made in the repairing room by simmering down fragments of parchment and vellum in water and should be thick enough to go to a jelly (but not a stiff one) when cold.
1 The disastrous effect, for example, of experiments with tracing paper, goldbeater's skin and strange adhesives may still be seen in many places in the Public Records.
2 For this reason the use of materials such as that known in Germany as zapon (a celluloid solution used instead of size) has not here been considered.
3 On the subject of Seals see also some separate remarks in section below.
4 So far as I am aware no one has yet devised a method of preserving the cheaper modern papers, whose weakness is that of the actual fibres composing them. Something may be done by covering them completely on both sides with transparent but air-excluding material of a permanent character : in the New York Public Library, for instance, certain Newspapers have been thus treated with Japanese paper and rice paste.
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In certain cases the use of an alien material is unavoidable : notably three. First when size cannot be used as an adhesive (as it often cannot) paste is required : this again is best made at home and (to avoid the use of preservatives) made frequently.1 There are times when it would be very valuable to be able to use one of the ready-made ' dry mountants ' : but this is in the nature of an experiment even if it is preceded by a specific report from a chemist ; and it should certainly never be used without one, nor used generally at all.
The second case covers the addition of a guard to one side of a document, by means of which it may be filed or sewn.
The third arises when little or no overlap is available for the affixing of repairing material and some transparent material is therefore necessary : here pure natural silk gauze is suggested ; silk being known to withstand the effect of time, and this material, properly applied, being practically invisible.
Methods of repairing Parchment and Paper. It must be premised that no amount of precept on this subject can replace ocular demonstration and experience ; and moreover that good Repairers vary in their technique : but some of the most common processes are described, in stages, below ; and a few remarks of general application may be made here. Taking it for granted that the Repairer is governed by well-understood rules which will prevent the destruction of any part of the document under any circumstances, and of any part of its old covering or labelling without specific consideration or instruc- tion in each case,2 we may start with a warning that his first
1 See on the subject of various pastes Douglas Cockerell's Bookbinding and the Care of Books (1901). But recent experiments made by Dr. G. H. Fowler seemed to shew that paste made with wheat flour (he recommends Canadian red wheat) is still the best. It should be very thoroughly boiled (a double saucepan is indicated) and made thick ; to be thinned as required in use with water. The use of a pinch of alum (not more than half an ounce to a pound of flour) is traditional in some places : the objection that it may result in a slight additional acidity is to a certain extent balanced by the fact that it makes possible the admixture of a pinch of resin ; which gives an extra ' tackiness ' valuable in some special cases.
2 This is a point worth emphasizing : many binders (to take one example) find it difficult, when first introduced to Archive work, to realize that they may not even destroy old end-papers.
§5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 71
and invariable proceeding should be to check the numbering of the individual leaves, membranes, &c, composing his document or, if necessary, number them himself ; using in the latter case a soft black lead pencil and a method of numerations which will distinguish it from old ones.1 After this there will normally be (apart from the preliminary separation of mem- branes or leaves in a roll, file or book) from six to eight opera- tions to perform : the flattening of the document ; preparation of new material ; application of patches, &c. ; drying out ; sizing, if this is necessary ; and second drying ; final pressing ; trimming, assembling and make-up. Some of these, of course, may involve several stages.
F or flattening the document the Repairer relies on water and a soft sponge except where a carbon ink 2 or paint make this impossible : fortunately this happens only in a minority of instances but in the cases (obviously requiring higher degrees of skill) where it does methods range from the simple one of sponging on the reverse side only to various devices 3 for making paper, parchment or vellum (the last two very hygroscopic substances, fortunately) absorb moisture without actual contact. Two warnings may be given at this point : one that documents with paint or carbon on them must never be pressed while in the damp state : the second, that there is a difference between colour which runs (on the surface) and colour which spreads. The last-named misfortune occurs when absorbent or fibrous material has on it something like a modern coloured ink 4
1 At the Record Office a small diamond-shaped frame is drawn round the number.
2 True inks (made of gall and iron : see below Part IV § 2(d) ) are stains, penetrating the fibres of the writing material : others (including all the colours of the early limners and the so-called Chinese and Indian inks) are pigments more or less adhering to the surface thanks to an adhesive medium : but in the later medieval period we get sometimes an admixture of carbon and gum with true ink.
3 An ingenious device employed by Mr. Cockerell for parchment and vellum work consists of a frame on legs, like a table without a top : the document is suspended on this, in the place where the top ought to be, by means of weights pendent on strings clipped to its edges and hanging over the sides of the frame ; in which position it is exposed to the humidity from a neighbouring layer of damped cloth. It is admirable for fine work on delicate materials but rather slow when applied to the coarser vellums and perhaps a little cumbrous for a worker who has large quantities of sheets to treat.
4 Something like a modern red ink begins to occur fairly frequently in the 17th century, especially for rulings in large formal documents.
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and I know no means of preventing it certainly. Both in this case and in that of surface pigments the use of fixatives before repair has been suggested : x but I know as yet none that I consider sure.
The preparation of new material is based mainly on the parable of new patches on old garments : new paper must be chosen of a consistency to match as nearly as possible that of the old ; and new parchment must be rendered down, to the same end, by filing. Parchment or vellum will need, in any case, to be roughed on one side in that part which is to take the adhesive ; and both parchment and paper, if they are to be used for anything like patching, must have a ' feather ' or irregular edge, the material being thinned away to nothing : this can be done in the case of paper by skilful tearing but parchment requires the paring-knife and file. No patch or edging of new material should ever have a straight or cut edge.
Methods of application are too much a matter of practice for description to be of much profit ; though we may note as fundamental the constant attempt to get old and new to stretch, and again contract, to the same extent and in the same way : from which it results first that document and repairing material must be equally damped and second that in the case of paper the laying lines must run in the same direction. As to the processes employed — documents which are only decayed may be treated by mere sizing and pressing, or if written on one side only may be backed with new material of the same kind,2 which can be torn or cut away to reveal any endorsement. Where complete backing is not possible the damaged part of the docu- ment may be edged or patched with new material : but whether complete backing is used or only a patch or edging, any considerable hole should be filled with a second piece of new
The ' spreading ' power (under the influence of damp) of writing in, or dust from, the purple variety of ' indelible ' pencil is one of the reasons why that product should never be allowed near documents.
1 A well-known fixative is a solution of white shellac in alcohol ; which can be sprayed.
2 It is a permissible departure from principle in the case of very large documents (especially parchment ones) to mount on unbleached linen instead of backing with their own material.
§ 5 PHYSICAL DEFENCE OF ARCHIVES 73
material, of the size and shape of the hole, dropped into it from the other side 1 after the first operation has been performed. In the case of a paper sheet written on both sides the best method (though expensive) as a rule is framing ; where a complete sheet of new paper is pasted down over the old and the centre of it immediately torn away again to reveal the writing.2 With all these processes silk gauze, normally laid on 3 underneath the other new material, is employed when excep- tional fragility, or the absence of sufficient blank space in the document for an overlap, render it essential.
As to the first drying we need only say that it is normally accomplished between sheets of absorbent paper under only the lightest of weights : though in some cases a paper document may have a short nip in the press during this process. After drying all paper and some parchment documents are soaked with warm (not hot) size laid on with a broad soft brush ; and again dried, this time by being hung on lines.4 They are then placed between sheets of cartridge and these between pressing boards and so put into the large press : after which surplus repairing material is trimmed away ; and they are made-up into final form.
The above is the series of ordinary processes but we may add that a document which has been mounted on new material, specially a large one, may often be conveniently finished by being stretched while damp on a stout millboard covered with waxed tissue paper. For this purpose the new material is cut to project well beyond the old and these surplus edges are
1 In the case of parchment repair this ' backing and filling ' system has the advantage (that the whole of one side of the new material is to be roughed, which saves a good deal of in and out filing. At the Record Office the extended use of this system has justified the installation of a machine by which whole skins are roughed before the patches, &c. are cut out of them. These are, of course, finally treated with file and paring knife before application.
2 Framing is particularly satisfactory when the document consists of sheets of a book which are subsequently to be re-bound.
3 It should be laid on dry and pasted over, surplus paste being then removed with the sponge.
4 They must be shifted from time to time to prevent them sticking.
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turned over and pasted on to the back of the millboard : the whole being then left to dry.1
We have given here a description of the chief methods and processes employed at the Public Record Office : it is not intended to exclude the possibility of others 2 but it is claimed that these are at least governed throughout by the single principle with which we started. Turning finally to the question of Implements we note that very little is needed of a special character. The bookbinder's bone ' folder ', and some kind of bodkin for adjusting the tinier pieces of decayed material, are essentials ; and so are good brushes — a painter's round bristle brush for paste and a large flat one of hair (mounted on its handle with zinc, not iron) for sizing : but after these almost the sole special supply is that of the press and pressing boards. It should be noted, by the way, that a Repairing Room which is supplied with large iron presses will still need a ' nipping- press ' which can be worked with one hand. Scissors and needles, files and knives,3 bowls, saucepans and sponges, and other like articles, we have already implied. One matter we have not mentioned is that of cleaning materials — bread and the softest draftsman's India rubber : they will be needed but it is to be noted that they cannot generally be used after repair (which acts as a fixative) and in many cases can only be used before it with great care.4
1 It is sometimes a convenient thing to use a stout wooden "ply" board, lined with repairing paper, for this purpose ; and to leave a large document permanently stretched in this way for easy handling. Not being itself stuck to the board it can always be detached in a moment by running a knife round the edge.
2 One of the most skilful of paper-repairing operations, for instance, is to split the document and mount the two sides on a core of new paper. But experience seems to shew that this is never an unavoidable expedient and it is difficult to believe that any operator could invariably practise it without accident.
3 A half-round bastard file is best for the purpose. Paring knives the Repairer will