During the 15th century the transition, which marks the change from medieval to modern history, affects also the character of historical sources and historical writing. In the first place, history ceases to be the exclusive province of the church; monastic chronicles shrink to a trickle and then dry up; the last of their kind in England is the Greyfriars Chronicle (Camden Society), which ends in 1554. Their place is taken by the city chronicle compiled by middle-class laymen, just as the Renaissance was not a revival of clerical learning, but the expression of new intellectual demands on the part of the laity. Secondly, the definite disappearance of the medieval ideas of a cosmopolitan world and the emergence of national states begat diplomacy, and with it an ever-swelling mass of diplomatic material. Diplomacy had hitherto been occasional and intermittent, and embassies rare; now we get resident ambassadors carrying on a regular correspondence (see [Diplomacy]). The mercantile interests of Venice made it the pioneer in this direction, though its representatives abroad were at first commercial rather than diplomatic agents. The Calendar of Venetian State Papers goes back to the 14th century, but does not become copious till the reign of Henry VII., when also the Spanish Calendar begins. Resident French ambassadors in England only begin in the 16th century, and later still those from the emperor, the German and Italian states other than Venice. In the third place, the development of the new monarchy involved an enormous extension of the activity of the central government, and therefore a corresponding expansion in the records of its energy.
The political records of this energy are the State Papers, a class of document which soon dwarfs all others, and renders chroniclers, historians and the like almost negligible quantities as sources of history; but in another way their value is enhanced, for these hundreds of thousands of documents provide a test of the accuracy of modern historians which is imperfect in the case of medieval chroniclers and almost non-existent in that of ancient writers. These state papers are either “foreign” or “domestic,” that is to say, the correspondence of the English government with its agents abroad, or at home. There is also the correspondence of foreign ambassadors resident in England with their governments. This last class of documents exists in England mainly in the form of transcripts from the originals in foreign archives, which have been made for the purpose of the Venetian and Spanish Calendars of state papers. The Venetian Calendar had by 1909 been carried well into the 17th century; the Spanish (which includes transcripts from the Habsburg archives at Vienna, Brussels and Simancas) covered only the reigns of Henry VII. and VIII. and Queen Elizabeth. No attempt had yet been made to calendar the French correspondence in a similar way, though the French Foreign Office published some fragmentary collections, such as the Correspondance de MM. de Castillon et de Marillac and that of Odet de Selve. There are other collections too numerous to enumerate, such as Lettenhove’s edition of Philip II.’s correspondence relating to the Netherlands, Diegerick and Müller’s, Teulet’s and Albéri’s collections, the French Documents inédits and the Spanish Documentos ineditos, all containing state papers relating to England’s foreign policy in the 16th century. The Scottish and Irish state papers are calendared in separate series and without much system. Thus for Scottish affairs there are four series, the Border Papers, the Hamilton Papers, Thorp’s Calendar, and, more recent and complete, Bain’s Calendar. For Ireland, besides the regular Irish state papers, there are the Carew Papers, almost as important. Anarchy, indeed, pervades the whole method of publication. For the reign of Henry VII. we have, besides the Venetian and Spanish Calendars, only three volumes—Gairdner’s Letters and Papers of Richard III. and Henry VII. and Campbell’s Materials (2 vols., Rolls series). Then with the reign of Henry VIII. begins the magnificent and monumental Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., the one modern series for which the Record Office deserves unstinted praise. This is not limited to state papers, domestic and foreign, nor to documents in the Record Office; it calendars private letters, grants, &c., extant in the British Museum and elsewhere. It extends to 21 volumes, each volume consisting of two or more parts, and some parts (as in vol. iv.) containing over a thousand pages; it comprises at least fifty thousand documents. Its value, however, varies; the earlier volumes are not so full as the later, the documents are not so well calendared, and some classes are excluded from earlier, which appear in the later, volumes.
After 1547 a different plan is adopted, though not consistently followed. Only state papers are calendared, and as a rule only those in the Record Office; and the domestic are separated from the foreign. The great fault is the neglect of the vast quantities of state papers in the British Museum. The Domestic Calendar (the first volume of which is very inadequate) extended in 1909 in a series of more than seventy volumes nearly to the end of the 17th century; the mass of MSS. calendared therein may be gathered from the fact that for the reign of Elizabeth the Domestic state papers fill over three hundred MS. volumes. The Foreign Calendar had only got to 1582, but it occupied sixteen printed volumes against one of the Domestic Calendar. For the masses of MSS. uncalendared in the British Museum there is no guide except the imperfect indexes to the Cotton, Harleian, Lansdowne, Additional and other collections. Hardly less important than the calendars are the reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission and the appendices thereto, which extend to over a hundred volumes; twelve are occupied by Lord Salisbury’s 16th-century MSS. at Hatfield House. The dispersion of these state papers is due to the fact that they were in those days treated not as the property of the state, but as the private property of individual secretaries.
State papers represent only one side of the activity of the central government. The register of the privy council, extending with some lacunae from 1539 to 1604, has been printed in thirty-two volumes. The Rotuli parliamentorum end with Henry VII., but in 1509 begin the journals of the House of Lords, and in 1547 the journals of the House of Commons. These are supplemented by private diaries of members of parliament, several of which were used in D’Ewes’s Journals. Legal history can now be followed in a continuous series of law reports, beginning with Keilway, Staunford and Dyer, and going on with Coke and many others; documentary records of various courts are exemplified in the Select Cases from the star chamber, the court of requests and admiralty courts, published by the Selden Society; and there are voluminous records of the courts of augmentations, first-fruits, wards and liveries in the Record Office. For Ireland, besides the state papers, there are the Calendars of Patents and of Fiants, and for Scotland the Exchequer Rolls and Registers of the Privy Council and of the Great Seal, both extending to many volumes.
Unofficial sources multiply with equal rapidity, but it is impossible to enumerate the collections of private letters, &c., only a few of which have been published. The chronicles, which in the 15th century are usually meagre productions like Warkworth’s (Camden Society), get fuller, especially those emanating from London. Fabyan is succeeded by Hall, an indispensable authority for Henry VIII., and Hall by Grafton. Other useful books are Wriothesley’s Chronicle and Machyn’s Diary, and they have numerous successors; some of their works have been edited for the Camden Society, which now takes the place of the Rolls series. The most important are Holinshed, Stow and Camden; and gradually, with Speed and Bacon, the chronicle develops into the history, and early in the 17th century we get such works as Lord Herbert’s Reign of Henry VIII., Hayward’s Edward VI., and, on the ecclesiastical side, Heylyn, Fuller, Burnet and Collier’s histories of the church and Reformation. Foxe, who died in 1587, included a vast and generally accurate collection of documents in his Acts and Monuments, popularized as the Book of Martyrs, though his own contributions have to be discounted as much as those of Sanders, Parsons and other Roman Catholic controversialists. Two other great collections are the Parker Society’s publications (56 vols.), which contain besides the works of the reformers a considerable number of their letters, and Strype’s works (26 vols.). The naval epic of the period is Hakluyt’s Navigations, re-edited in 12 vols. in 1902, and continued in Purchas’s Pilgrims.
In the 17th century the domestic and foreign state papers eclipse other sources almost more completely than in the 16th. The colonial state papers now become important and extensive, those relating to America and the West Indies being most numerous (18 vols. to 1700). Parliamentary records naturally expand, and the journals of both houses become more detailed. Parliamentary diarists like D’Ewes, Burton and Walter Yonge, only a fragment of whose shorthand notes in the British Museum has been published (Camden Society), elucidate the bare official statements; and from 1660 the series of parliamentary debates is fairly complete, though not so full or authoritative as it becomes with Hansard in the 19th century. Social diarists of great value appear after the Restoration in Pepys, Evelyn, Reresby, Narcissus Luttrell and Swift (Journal to Stella), and political writing grows more important as a source of history, whether it takes the form of Bacon’s (ed. Spedding) or Milton’s treatises, or of satires like Dryden’s and political pamphlets like Halifax’s and then Swift’s, Defoe’s and Steele’s. Clarendon’s Great Rebellion and Burnet’s History of My Own Time are the first modern attempts at contemporary history, as distinct from chronicles and annals, in England, although it is difficult to exclude the work of Matthew Paris from the category. The innumerable tracts and newsletters are a valuable source for the Civil Wars and Commonwealth period (see J.B. Williams, A History of English Journalism, 1909), while Thurloe’s, Clarendon’s and Nalson’s collections of state papers deserve a mention apart from the Domestic Calendar. There is a still more monumental collection—the Carte Papers—on Irish affairs in the Bodleian Library, where also the Tanner MSS. and other collections have only been very partially worked. The volumes of the Historical MSS. Commission are of great value for the later Stuart period, notably the House of Lords MSS.
For the 18th century the only calendars are the Home Office Papers and the Treasury Books and Papers, the further specialization of government having made it necessary to differentiate domestic state papers into several classes. But it need hardly be said that the bulk of correspondence in the Record Office does not diminish. Outside its walls the most important single collection is perhaps the duke of Newcastle’s papers among the Additional MSS. in the British Museum; the Stuart papers at Windsor, Mr Fortescue’s at Dropmore, Lord Charlemont’s (Irish affairs), Lord Dartmouth’s (American affairs) and Lord Carlisle’s, all calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission, are also valuable. Chatham’s correspondence with colonial governors has been published (2 vols., 1906), as have the Grenville Papers, Bedford Correspondence, Malmesbury’s Diaries, Auckland’s Journals and Correspondence, Grafton’s Correspondence, Lord North’s Correspondence with George III., and other correspondence in The Memoirs of Rockingham, and the duke of Buckingham’s Court and Cabinets of George III. Mention should also be made of Gower’s Despatches, the Cornwallis Correspondence, Rose’s Correspondence and Lord Colchester’s Correspondence. Of special interest is the series of naval records, despatches to and from naval commanders, proceedings of courts-martial, and logs in the Record Office which have never been properly utilized.
Among unofficial sources the most characteristic of the 18th century are letters, memoirs and periodical literature. Horace Walpole’s Letters (Clarendon Press, 16 vols.) are the best comment on the history of the period; his Memoirs are not so good, though they are superior to Wraxall, who succeeds him. Periodical literature becomes regular in the reign of Queen Anne, chiefly in the form of journals like the Spectator; but several daily newspapers, including The Times, were founded during the century. The Craftsman provided a vehicle for Bolingbroke’s attacks on Walpole, while the Gentleman’s Magazine and Annual Register begin a more serious and prolonged career. Both contain occasional state papers, and not very trustworthy reports of parliamentary proceedings. The publication of debates was not authorized till the last quarter of the century; parliamentary papers begin earlier, but only slowly attain their present portentous dimensions. Political writing is at its best from Halifax to Cobbett, and its three greatest names are perhaps Swift, “Junius” and Burke, though Steele, Defoe, Bolingbroke and Dr Johnson are not far behind, while Canning’s contributions to the Anti-Jacobin and Gillray’s caricatures require mention.
The sources for 19th-century history are somewhat similar to those for the 18th. Diaries continue in the Creevey Papers, Greville’s Diary, and lesser but not less voluminous writers like Sir M.E. Grant-Duff. The most important series of letters is Queen Victoria’s (ed. Lord Esher and A.C. Benson, 1908), and the correspondence of most of her prime ministers and many of her other advisers has been partially published. Of political biographies there is no end. The great bulk of material, however, consists of blue-books, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, and newspapers—which are better as indirect than direct evidence. The real truth is not of course revealed at once, and many episodes in 19th-century history are still shrouded by official secrecy. In this respect English governments are more cautious or reactionary than many of those on the continent of Europe, and access to official documents is denied when it is granted elsewhere; even the lapse of a century is not considered a sufficient salve for susceptibilities which might be wounded by the whole truth.
Meanwhile the 19th century witnessed a great development in historical writing. In the middle ages the stimulus to write was mainly of a moral or ecclesiastical nature, though the patriotic impulse which had suggested the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was perhaps never entirely absent, and the ecclesiastical motive often degenerated into a desire to glorify, sometimes even by forgery, not merely the church as a whole, but the particular monastery to which the writer belonged. As nationalism developed, the patriotic motive supplanted the ecclesiastical, and stress is laid on the “famous” history of England. Insular self-glorification was, however, modified to some extent by the Renaissance, which developed an interest in other lands, and the Reformation, which gave to much historical writing a partisan theological bias. This still colours most of the “histories” of the Reformation period, because the issues of that time are living issues, and the writers of these histories are committed beforehand by their profession and their position to a particular interpretation. In the 17th century political partisanship coloured historical writing, and that, too, remained a potent motive so long as historians were either Whigs or Tories. Histories were often elaborate party pamphlets, and this race of historians is hardly yet extinct. Macaulay is not greatly superior in impartiality to Hume; Gibbon and Robertson were less open to temptation because they avoided English subjects. Hallam deliberately aimed at impartiality, but he could not escape his Whig atmosphere. Nevertheless, the effort to be impartial marks a new conception of history, which is well expressed in Lord Acton’s admonition to his contributors in the Cambridge Modern History. Historians are to serve no cause but that of truth; in so far even as they desire a line of investigation to lead to a particular result, they are not, maintains Professor Bury, real historians. S.R. Gardiner perhaps attained most nearly this severe ideal among English historians, and Ranke among Germans. But, even when all conscious bias is eliminated, the unconscious bias remains, and Ranke’s history of the Reformation is essentially a middle-class, even bourgeois, presentment. Stubbs’s medievalist sympathies colour his history throughout, and still more strongly does Froude’s anti-clericalism. Freeman’s bias was peculiar; he is really a West Saxon of Godwine’s time reincarnated, and his Somerset hatred of French, Scots and Mercian foreigners sets off his robust loyalty to the house of Wessex. Lecky and Creighton are almost as dispassionate as Gardiner, but are more definitely committed to particular points of views, while democratic fervour pervades the fascinating pages of J.R. Green, and an intellectual secularism, which is almost religious in its intensity and idealism, inspired the genius of Maitland.