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Observations on the state of historical literature (1830)
Observations on the state of historical literature - 1830 Author:Nicholas Harris Nicolas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 44 CHAPTER IV. RECORD OFFICES CONDITION AND REGULATIONS. As the hope of advancing Historical knowledge in a great degree depends upon allowing the munim... more »ents of the country to be consulted without expense, and upon arranging and indexing the contents of the various repositories; and as those measures would greatly promote the ends of justice, by facilitating and lessening the charges for searches for legal purposes, it is desirable that the regulations of the principal offices of public record should be brought to the notice of his Majesty's government, and of the public in general. The most important repositories of documents known by the name of Record Offices, are the Tower, the Rolls Chapel, the Chapter House, Westminster, the Lord Treasurer's RememBrancer's Office, the Pipe Office, the TreaSuries of the King's Bench, and Common Pleas,the King's Remembrancer's Office, the AugMentation Office, and the Office of the Duchy Of Lancaster, each of which contains documents of the most valuable nature both for historical and legal purposes. Their contents, are, generally speaking, unindexed, but for access to and copies of them very heavy fees are demanded, so that these muniments in their present state are of slight utility. The following observations will be sufficient to shew how necessary it is that a change shouldbe made in the regulations of the principal repositories if their contents are to be available for literary purposes. The subjoined facts shew how the fee system acts upon literature. A county historian obtained permission from the proper persons to consult the Pipe Rolls, the value of which for historical purposes is well known, without paying the usual fees, his object being a literary one. After some difficulty, he learnt that those records were pres...« less