"To the Most Rev. and the Right Hon. The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
"The humble Memorial of the President and Council of the Camden Society, respectfully showeth,
"That the Camden Society was instituted in the year 1838, for the publication of early historical and literary remains.
"It has the honour to be patronised by H.R.H. the Prince Albert; and has supported, from its institution, by the countenance and subscription of your Grace's predecessor in the See of Canterbury.
"The Society has published forty volumes of works relating to English History, and continues to be actively engaged in researches connected with the same important branch of literature.
"In the course of its proceedings, the Society has had brought under its notice the manner in which the regulations of the Prerogative Office in Doctors' Commons interfere with the accuracy and completeness of works in the preparation of which the Council is now engaged, and with the pursuits and labours of all other historical inquirers; and they beg leave respectfully to submit to your Grace the results of certain investigations which they have made upon the subject.
"Besides the original wills deposited in the Office of the Prerogative Court, there is kept in the same repository a long series of register books, containing copies of wills entered chronologically from A.D. 1383 to the present time. These registers or books of entry fall practically into two different divisions or classes. The earlier and the latter books contain information suited to the wants of totally different kinds of persons, and applicable to entirely different purposes. Their custody is also of very different importance to the office. The class which is first both in number of books and in importance contains entries of modern wills. These are daily consulted by relatives of testators, by claimants and solicitors, principally for legal purposes, and yield a large revenue to the office in fees paid for searches, inspections, and copies. The second class, which comprises a comparatively small number of volumes, contains entries of ancient wills, dated before the period during which wills are now useful for legal purposes. These are never consulted by lawyers or claimants, nor do they yield any revenue to the office, save an occasional small receipt from the Camden Society, or from some similar body, or private literary inquirer.
"With respect to the original wills, and the entries of modern wills, your memorialists beg to express clearly that this application is not designed to have any reference to them. Your memorialists confine their remarks exclusively to the books of entries of those ancient wills which have long and unquestionably ceased to be useful for legal purposes.
"These entries of ancient wills are of the very highest importance to historical inquirers. They abound with illustrations of manners and customs; they exhibit in the most authentic way the state of religion, the condition of the various classes of the people, and of society in general; they are invaluable to the lexicographer, the genealogist, the topographer, the biographer,—to historical writers of every order and kind. They constitute the most important depository in existence of exact information relating to events and persons of the period to which they relate.
"But all this information is unavailable in consequence of the regulations of the office in which the wills are kept. All the books of entry, both of ancient and modern wills, are kept together, and can only be consulted in the same department of the same office, in the same manner and subject to precisely the same restrictions and the same payments. No distinction is made between the fees to be paid by a literary person who wishes to make a few notes from wills, perhaps three or four hundred years old, in order to rectify a fact, a name, a date, or to establish the proper place of a descent in a pedigree, or the exact meaning of a doubtful word, and the fees to be paid by the person who wants a copy of a will proved yesterday as evidence of a right to property perhaps to be established in a court of justice. No extract is allowed to be made, not even of a word or a date, except the names of the executors and the date of the will. Printed statements in historical books, which refer to wills, may not be compared with the wills as entered; even ancient copies of wills handed down for many generations in the families of the testators, may not be examined in the registered wills without paying the office for making new and entire copies.
"No such restrictions exclude literary inquirers from the British Museum, where there are papers equally valuable. The Public Record Offices are all open, either gratuitously or upon payment of easy fees. The Secretary of State for the Home Department grants permission of access to her Majesty's State Paper Office. Your Grace's predecessor gave the Camden Society free access to the registers of wills at Lambeth—documents exactly similar to those at Doctors' Commons. The Prerogative Office is, probably, the only public office in the kingdom which is shut against literary inquirers.
"The results of such regulations are obvious. The ancient wills at Doctors' Commons not being accessible to those to whom alone they are useful, yield scarcely any fees to the office; historical inquirers are discouraged; errors remain uncorrected; statements of facts in historical works are obliged to be left uncertain and incomplete; the researches of the Camden Society and other similar societies are thwarted; and all historical inquirers regard the condition of the Prerogative Office as a great literary grievance.
"The President and Council of the Camden Society respectfully submit these circumstances to your Grace with a full persuasion that nothing which relates to the welfare of English historical literature can be uninteresting either to your Grace personally, or to the Church over which you preside; and they humbly pray your Grace that such changes may be made in the regulations of the Prerogative Office as may assimilate its practice to that of the Public Record Office, so far as regards the inspection of the books of entry of ancient wills, or that such other remedy may be applied to the inconveniences now stated as to your Grace may seem fit.
"(Signed) Braybrooke, President.
Thomas Amyot, Director.
Henry Ellis.
J. Payne Collier, Treas.
Harry Verney.
H. H. Milman.
Joseph Hunter.
William J. Thoms, Sec.
Chs. Purton Cooper.
Thos. Stapleton.
Wm. Durrant Cooper.
Peter Levesque.
Thos. J. Pettigrew.
John Bruce.
Beriah Botfield.
Bolton Corney.
25. Parliament Street, Westminster,
13 April, 1848."
As the Archbishop stated his inability to afford any relief, The Camden Society availed themselves of the appointment of the Commission to inquire into the Law and Jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical and other Courts in relation to Matters Testamentary, to address to those Commissioners, in the month of January, 1853, a Memorial, of which the following is a copy:
"To the Right Honourable and Honourable the Commissioners appointed by Her Majesty to inquire into the Law and Jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical and other Courts in relation to Matters Testamentary.
"My Lords and Gentlemen,
"We, the undersigned, being the President and Council of the Camden Society, for the Publication of Early Historical and Literary Remains, beg to submit to your consideration a copy of a Memorial presented on the 13th April, 1848, by the President and then Council of this Society, to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, praying that such changes might be made in the regulations of the Prerogative Office as might assimilate its practice to that of the Public Record Office, so far as regards the inspection of the books of entry of ancient Wills, or that such other remedy might be applied to the inconveniences stated in that Memorial as to his Grace might seem fit.
"In reply to that Memorial his Grace was pleased to inform the Memorialists that he had no control whatever over the fees taken in the Prerogative Office.
"The Memorialists had not adopted the course of applying to his Grace the Archbishop until they had in vain endeavoured to obtain from the authorities of the Prerogative Office, Messrs. Dyneley, Iggulden, and Gostling, some modification of their rules in favour of literary inquirers. The answer of his Grace the Archbishop left them, therefore without present remedy.
"The grievance complained of continues entirely unaltered up to the present time.
"In all other public repositories to which in the course of our inquiries we have had occasion to apply, we have found a general and predominant feeling of the national importance of the cultivation of literature, and especially of that branch of it which relates to the past history of our own country. Every one seems heartily willing to promote historical inquiries. The Public Record Offices are now opened to persons engaged in literary pursuits by arrangements of the most satisfactory and liberal character. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury gives permission to literary men to search such of the early registers of his See as are in his own possession at Lambeth. Access is given to the registers of the Bishop of London; and throughout the kingdom private persons having in their possession historical documents are almost without exception not only willing but anxious to assist our inquiries. The authorities of the Prerogative Office in Doctors' Commons, perhaps, stand alone in their total want of sympathy with literature, and in their exclusion of literary inquirers by stringent rules, harshly, and in some instances even offensively, enforced.
"We have the honour to be,
"My Lords and Gentlemen,
"Your most obedient and very humble servants,
(Signed) Braybrooke, President.
John Bruce, Director.
C. Purton Cooper.
J. Payne Collier, Treas.
W. R. Drake.
Edwd. Foss.
Peter Levesque.
Strangford.
W. H. Blaauw.
W. Durrant Cooper.
Bolton Corney.
Henry Ellis.
Lambert B. Larking.
Fredk. Ouvry.
Wm. J. Thoms, Sec.
25. Parliament Street, Westminster,
January, 1853."
A Report from that Commission has been laid before Parliament; and a Bill for carrying into effect the recommendations contained in such Report, and transferring the powers of the Prerogative Court to the Court of Chancery, has been introduced into the House of Lords. The Bill contains no specific enactments as to the custody of the Wills.
Now, therefore, is the time for all who are interested in Historical Truth to use their best endeavours to procure the insertion of such clauses as shall place the Wills under the same custody as the other Judicial Records of the country, namely, that of Her Majesty's Keeper of Records.
With Literature represented in the House of Lords by a Brougham and a Campbell, in the Commons by a Macaulay, a Bulwer, and a D'Israeli, let but the real state of the case be once made public, and we have no fear but that the interests of English Historical Literature will be cared for and maintained.