he had taken an oath before the King's Council for their faithful preservation.

Under the same monarch in 1362, the records of the Court of King's Bench from the thirteenth to the thirty-fourth years of the reigning king were also brought to the Tower, and it is interesting to note that there were none for Trinity Term of the twenty-third year, because there had been no sittings of the justices on account of the pestilence then raging.

In succeeding centuries the records of the Courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas and Chancery continued to accumulatesome in the Tower, some in the Rolls Chapel, and in other repositories. When the eighteenth century was reached there happened an event which violently awakened public concern and led to an exhaustive survey and revelation of the vast extent of these accumulations. This event was the fire that broke out on a Saturday morning in Ashburnham House, where the Royal and Cottonian manuscripts were lodged, beginning from a manteltree set alight across a stove chimney under the room where the manuscripts were. Mr. Casley, the deputy librarian, rescued the famous Alexandrian MS. and the books under the head of “Augustus" in the Cottonian library. Some were carried into the apartment of the Captain of Westminster School, others into the Little Cloisters, then into the great boarding-house opposite Ashburnham House; and on the Monday following into the new building designed for the dormitory of the Westminster scholars. The work seems to have been done largely by volunteers, Arthur Onslow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, "being very active." With the fortunes afterwards of these Cottonian and other manuscripts, we have here nothing to do that is the story of the British Museum. But the fire and its warnings drew the attention of the House of Commons to the circumstances attaching to the public archives and led to the resolution for an address to the king on the subject with a promise of funds to sustain any action taken. Points in the address were that the places of deposit of these " inestimable monuments of antiquity" were in every respect inadequate; that portions were neither in proper offices nor proper hands; that the ancient methods of removal from the places of formation to the places of preservation had not been observed; and that the persons in charge were either not at all, or inadequately, paid.

At the behest of the committee appointed by the House there followed a systematic survey of the different places of deposit, including holes and corners where archives lay hid, accompanied by a statement from the custodian of each of the nature of its contents and the material condition of its buildings. The repositories were numerous. They included the Wakefield Tower and the rooms adjoining, and Cæsar's Chapel in the White Tower of the Tower of London; the Rolls Chapel; the Exchequer in New Palace Yard; the Office of the "Six Clerks "; the Augmentation Office; the Office of the Clerks of Inrolments; the Petty Bag; the Pipe Office in Gray's Inn; the First Fruits and Tenths Office; the offices of the King's Remembrancer and of the Treasurer's Remembrancer; also the offices of the Court of Exchequer, of the Duchy of Lancaster, and of the Custos Brevium at Westminster; the Court of Wards; the Chapter House at Westminster; the Crown Office; the Pipe Office; the Auditors of Land Revenue; the Court of Requests; the Court of Wards and Liveries.

The returns then made yield many points of interest. The records referred to in detail are those described in the official handbooks to the present contents of the Public Record Office, and it is not necessary to mention them here except in general terms. Beginning with the Tower of London, there were in the Wakefield Tower such things as the great series of Patent and Close Rolls; in the little closet adjoining were the Statute Rolls, also original letters from foreign kings, cardinals and princes, and papal Bulls; in a room up two pair of stairs inquisitions post mortem and ad quod damnum. In Cæsar's Chapel were Chancery Bills and Answers. Under the benches and in presses in the Chapel Rolls were similar Chancery documents, with Chancery decrees from the time of Henry VIII, Acts of Parliament, Coronation Rolls and parliamentary returns. It is related that when the old Rolls House was pulled down in August, 1719, great numbers of papers and parchments of the time of Elizabeth were discovered in utter confusion and were then put into order and placed in presses in the Rolls Chapel.

At Westminster, in a large ground-room next to the waterside (the ground floor several times raised to keep it dry!) lay rolls of ministers' accounts, the accounts of receipts and expenditure of the king's officers all over the country, from the time of Henry VIII

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to Charles I, accounts of rents fallen to the Crown on the dissolution of the monasteries, surveys and other revenue records. Similar records reposed in presses and oak tables in the entrance to the Exchequer Court in Westminster Hall. In a room over it were great numbers of ministers' accounts, unarranged, having neither index nor catalogue, court rolls, and counterparts of leases -" very valuable," as their custodian remarked. In December, 1713, Lord Oxford, then Lord High Treasurer, appointed Thomas Madox and William Soley to arrange and schedule them, but Lord Oxford being soon afterwards removed from office, and Madox being in an ill state of health, nothing was done. The ceilings and tiles of this room were in a ruinous condition.

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The Pipe Office in the same neighbourhood, with a branch in Grays Inn, was the repository of a noble and important series of archives, the great Roll of the Exchequer, revealing the ancient revenue of the Crown from the times of King Stephen. Here also were the " Foreign Accounts" of supplies granted by Parliament, part made up into great rolls, part thrown promiscuously into chests, but of these not many of earlier date than 1688. third series comprised the leases of Crown lands and lands of persons outlawed from King James' time, "well digested." Where those of earlier date lay was, to the Pipe Office gentlemen, unknown. There is a touch of irony in their remark that the Exchequer Office at Westminster was "not in extraordinary repair "-as it could not be, since the rain coming through the ceiling had damaged the records, and the presses were very old.

In the Chapter House at Westminster reposed the records up to the Revolution of the Custos Brevium of the Court of Common Pleas. The Custos in this instance was an earl who did his business as did many other fortunate persons-through a lesser paid deputy. For his purposes, the kingdom was marked out into five divisions, each division having its proper symbol: a heart for the Eastern Counties; a ladder for the region from Cambridgeshire to Sussex; a crow for the south-western district; a buckle for the central counties; a bell for the region from Warwickshire to Northumberland. Lancashire, Cheshire and Wales were outside the field of his operations. The contents of this office, arranged under these symbols, were in such good order that any one of them required could be found in a quarter of an hour.

The Chapter House, in addition, contained vast quantities of other and more important records than these writs. Here were, for example, the Rolls of the Curia Regis from the reign of Richard I to that of Henry III, before the two courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas were separated from it. Here were also Rolls of Assize and Pleas of the Crown as far back as the reign of Henry III; also fines of the reign of Henry II, records of Star Chamber proceedings, treaties, letters of ambassadors and ministers, court rolls, papal bulls, and what not. Is it to be wondered at, then, that buildings contiguous to the Chapter House and vaults underneath it, stored with brandy and other spirituous liquors, gave occasion for alarm-alarm increased by the fact that the late removal of a buttress might bring down the roof?

The worthy "Six Clerks" tell a mournful story of their own and their predecessors' efforts during sixty years to persuade people in authority to aid them in carrying out the duty which lay upon them to transfer such of their records as were no longer required for current use to a proper repository in the Tower. This should have been done regularly by warrant of the Master of the Rolls, but other occupants of the Tower were not friendly to these proceedings. Sir Christopher Wren, however, gave advice; Lord Chancellor Harcourt tackled the Board of Ordnance; the Officers of the Works were referred to; the House of Lords appointed a committee to deal with the matter and addressed the king, who promised to consider it. But all in vain. The sequence reminds one of the House that Jack built. Finally, the Six Clerks, defeated, desisted from the pursuit. As a parting shot of defiance, they let it be known that their records-cases of English Bills in the Court of Equity—were increasing in a building more than a hundred years old where the floors were sinking, wall and roof coming apart, and where the only refuge for their papers and parchments was to be found in the vaults and passages in which, in 1717, they had been piled in heaps.

The Augmentation Office, as far as material conditions were concerned, had a more satisfactory account to give of its valuable and interesting possessions-records of the properties of monasteries and universities, Crown lands, proceedings in the Court of Augmentations, certificates of chantries and colleges, cartularies, and so on. The office was large, airy, damp-proof

and of adequate capacity. But from another point of view the conditions were not satisfactory. "Great numbers of their records," they represented, " had never been methodized": their keeper was without salary, the perquisites-formerly considerable -had become small. They considered that they had now a favourable opportunity for expressing a hope of amendment in this respect.

In the King's Remembrancer's Office, the principal records, various in character, began in Henry the Third's reign. Very precious were certain books and manuscripts in the special custody of the " First Secondary,” such as the “ Abridgement of Domesday Book," the "Red Book," and ancient statutes. As to their buildings the great and principal record room was said to be very convenient, but needing repair. The room was, moreover, cluttered up with old chests of undigested papers supposed to be of no use and, most of them, not to relate to the business of the office. The " Seizure Room" adjoining was also similarly encumbered. Two rooms in the Brick Tower were in great disorder, the floors covered with wooden tallies, post books and papers in confusion. These wooden tallies at a later day were the cause of the great fire which destroyed the old Houses of Parliament in 1834.

In the Treasurer's Remembrancer's Office, the principal records, " Memoranda " and " Originalia," also began in Henry the Third's reign. These were likewise of the utmost importance, concerning the tenures and estates of the nobility and gentry, franchises and privileges of manors, town and liberties, accounts of sheriffs and escheators, the land and other revenues of the Crown, and so on. The "Memoranda," however, had not been so carefully preserved since Charles the First's time, for the reason that the clerks had been unpaid for methodizing them since the suppression of the Court of Wards and Liveries, whose business was transacted in the Treasurer's Remembrancer's Office with considerable profit. The " Originalia " had also been neglected for a similar reason. The ancient fee of 40 marks due to the clerk, whose business it was, had been declined for several years, because of its inadequacy, and the work left undone, with consequent confusion.

In the office of First Fruits and Tenths lay, as may be guessed, valuable records of the Church, surveys of all ecclesiastical