The Trials of a Country Parson

by Augustus Jessopp

From what has been said thus far I hope it will be clear that I am as little inclined to advocate the removal of the municipal records from their proper homes, the muniment rooms of the provincial boroughs, as I am to propose that the archives of London should be transferred from the Guildhall to any other repository. What is wanted is not centralization but classification. Already it has been found advisable to remove the natural history collections from the British Museum and to find a home for them in Kensington. The time may come, and may not be far distant, when a further step will have to be taken in the direction of relieving the congested storehouses at Bloomsbury of some other assemblage of precious objects. In London we find ourselves more and more driven to specialize our collections, if only to save ourselves from bewilderment.

But as to any great collections of historical documents, except only that at the Record Office, they do not exist; they have still to be made. Meanwhile one large class of records—the ecclesiastical, parochial, and testamentary records—may be said to be in great danger of gradually but certainly perishing, partly from mere disuse, partly from the want of any adequate provision for their safe keeping, partly from the actual uncertainty that attaches to their ownership. One and all they are national records, the preservation of which ought to be assured to the nation by very different precautions from any which now are provided. Whom do the parish registers belong to? What guarantee have we that X or Y or Z may not sell “his” registers to the highest bidder? In point of fact, parish registers have been bought and sold again and again. Who are the owners of such a splendid collection of historic MSS. as is to be found in the archives of St. Lawrence’s Church, Reading? What is to prevent the churchwardens from selling them to a “collector” and appropriating the proceeds towards the expense of a new organ? Where are the records of Barchester now that the Venerable Archdeacon Grantley has ceased to edify us with his eloquent charges? In how many instances is there to be found anything remotely resembling a catalogue of such archidiaconal records? How many living men have ever consulted such as there are or would know where to look for them?

Let me not be misunderstood. I have received so much kindness, hospitality, and cordial assistance at the hands of so many who have laid open their muniments to my inspection, I have found and made among these gentlemen such warm friends that I can only think of them and speak of them with gratitude and esteem. But who knows better than the most learned and most entirely loyal among the custodians of our ecclesiastical and parochial muniments that the state of things as they are is not the state of things that ought to be?

And yet there can surely be no insuperable difficulty in grouping together our ecclesiastical, testamentary, and parochial muniments, forming them into one homogeneous collection, and bringing them together into a single provincial record office, taking the geographical limits of the diocese as the area within which the several aggregates of ancient documents shall be deposited.

Few men can pay a visit to any of our cathedrals, especially those within whose precincts there are still to be found any considerable remains of the old conventual buildings, without being struck by what seems to be the waste of room in the church itself and its outlying dependencies. Not to speak of the side chapels, which some would have a sentimental objection to utilizing—though I know instances where they are mere store places for workmen’s tools and lumber—consider the immense areas at our disposal in many a transept, triforium, or chapter house. Consider how comparatively small a chamber suffices, for the most part, to contain all the existing records of a cathedral chapter or of the bishop of a see. Consider how all the parochial registers even of a large diocese from 1538 to 1800 could easily stand upon a dozen shelves of ten feet long, and all the wills of two or three counties from the earliest times to the beginning of this century could be accommodated without difficulty in many a drawing-room. Consider all these things and more that I forbear from dwelling on, and it will be abundantly clear that the difficulty of providing accommodation for one group of historic MSS. at any rate will be found insignificant if we set ourselves seriously to deal with it. Within the precincts of our cathedrals there is ample space and verge enough for any such requirements as this group of records may be supposed to make upon us.

But assuming that such an assemblage, such a grouping, of historic MSS. were determined on, and that the housing of it were found to be easy and practicable, would it not be necessary that a duly qualified custodian should be appointed to take the oversight of the collection and to act as the provincial or diocesan keeper of the records? Of course it would; and this is exactly what is very urgently needed. I am told that a letter from Mr. Charles Mason, which appeared in The Times not so very long ago, and which gave an account of his experience in trying to institute a search among the diocesan records of Llandaff, “produced quite a sensation in some quarters.” I think it must be among those who have had very little experience indeed of similar adventures. The truth is that it is the exception rather than the rule to find among the present responsible keepers of parochial testamentary or episcopal records a gentleman who even professes to be able to decipher the more ancient and precious MSS. which he has under his charge. The registrar of a diocese, of an archdeaconry, or of a prerogative court, the parson of a parish, or the churchwarden, each and all have something else to do than spend the precious hours upon poring over their muniments.

Such men as Dr. Bensley of Norwich are few and far between. Gentlemen whose duties involve many hours a day of arduous and exhausting labour can only devote their leisure moments to research, and when they do so they are in danger of getting something less than thanks as their reward. The chivalrous and splendid enthusiasm of the late Mr. Wickenden at Lincoln, of Dr. Sheppard at Canterbury, of Canon Raine at York, has laid us under profound obligation, but in each and all of these instances the labour of long years has been a labour of love, and the very permission to engage and continue in it has been conceded as a privilege conferred upon the toiler. Or again, when the fascination which “musty parchments” exercise over some minds has irresistibly impelled such generous students as Archdeacon Chapman of Ely, the late Canon Swainson of Chichester, or Mr. Symonds of Norwich, to make sacrifices of time and money in the preservation or deciphering or calendaring the precious documents to which their position as members of the chapter gave them free access, they have found some portion of their recompense in the wonder and astonishment of the Philistines that any human being could undertake and carry on so much without being paid for it.

A registrar is a functionary whose duty it is to keep a register of what is going on from day to day. I suspect it is very seldom part of his duty to find out what people were doing or recording long before he was born. At any rate it is no part of his duty to find that out for you, or to teach you where and how to look for what you want to discover. So with the parson of a parish. For the most part he is possessed by a conviction that if he loses his registers something dreadful will happen to him; and accordingly when he goes away for a holiday he leaves his cook in charge, with a solemn warning that she is to let no one see “the books” except in her presence and under her eye; and a very awful eye it sometimes is. But who of us has not been kindly and frankly told by a genial brother that if we want such or such an entry copied we must come and copy it ourselves, for that our good-natured correspondent cannot make out the old writing?

As to the churchwardens, assuming that they are to be looked upon as responsible for the custody of the parochial evidences, to talk of them as keepers of ancient MSS. is a little too ridiculous. It is true that there are in my vestry two dilapidated parish chests, which once presumably were full of wills and deeds and conveyances and evidences, which if they were now forthcoming, might considerably disturb the equanimity of some personages here and there; but those old chests are used as coal-bins now, and have been so used from times to which the memory of man doth not extend. I could tell some odd stories of my experience as a dryasdust in days when I employed my leisure hours in peeping into the dens and caves of the earth.

Assuredly if we resolve upon collecting together any group of historic MSS. and making them available for students engaged in original research, it will be necessary to put them under the custody of a trained archiviste, as the French call such a functionary, and give him a recognized position as provincial keeper of the records. Such an official, with one or two subordinates under him, should be required to give their time exclusively to the work marked out for them. Let that work be organized in the same way and on the same lines as those laid down in the great London tabularium. Let there be the same system adopted of arranging, indexing, and calendaring. Let there be issued periodically reports addressed to the central authorities, let the archives be open to students and inquirers without fee or any payment. If any one wishes to have a document transcribed or a search made which, if he knew how to set about it, he might carry on himself, let him pay for his “office copy” or his search at a reasonable charge. As for the details of such an arrangement let them settle themselves, as they surely will; in the meantime let us trust to the golden principle “Solvitur ambulando.”