“The Registry; where they keep the wills?”
“A’dinnot know for shower,” said the farmer, looking round. “Ding! If I shouldn’t wondther if thot wur it!”
Mr. Wallace concealed his disparaging appreciation of the farmer’s judgment, when he pointed with his ash-stick to a kind of shed—such as is usually called a lean-to—squeezing itself, as if it were (with very good reason) ashamed, into the south-west corner of the cross, which the ground-plan of the cathedral forms, and sticking to it like a dirty little pimple. But, what was his dismay, on going thither to inquire, to discover that this actually WAS the unimpeachable Registry; and that a confined den within, which would have made an indifferent chandler’s shop, with a pestilent little chimney in it, filling it with smoke like a Lapland hut, was the “Searching Office.”
Mr. Wallace was soon taught that seven thousand pounds per annum is, after all, but a poor pittance for the Registrar of a simple bishopric, when calculated by the ecclesiastical rule of three; for the registry of Cathedral number two, produces to its fortunate patentees twenty thousand per annum; about ten thousand a year for the Registrar who does nothing, and the like amount for his Deputy who helps him.
The portentous personage to whom Mr. Wallace was accredited, received him in state in the small office surrounded by a Surrogate (apparently retained on purpose to cross-examine Mr. Wallace) and the clerks. Mr. Wallace mentioned that he believed the Archbishop had written to the Deputy-Registrar to afford him every facility in consulting the documents under his charge. The Deputy Registrar owned that the Archbishop had done so, but declared that the Archbishop had no jurisdiction whatever over him; and, claiming as he did, complete immunity from, and irresponsibility to, all human control, he begged to say that his Grace the Archbishop, in presuming to write to the high-authorities of that unimpeachable Registry on such a subject, had taken a very great liberty. Mr. William Wallace inquired if that was to be the answer he was expected to convey to the Archbishop? bowed, and was about to retire, when the awful Deputy recalled him. What did he want to search for? Mr. Wallace repeated that his object was wholly literary and archæological. The chief clerk who here came in as a reinforcement, was so good as to intimate that he “didn’t believe a word of it.” Whereupon a strong opinion was added that Mr. Wallace wanted surreptitiously to obtain pedigrees, and to consult wills. A powerful battery of cross-questionings was then opened by the heavier authorities, aided by a few shots from the light-bob, or skirmishing party—the clerk. But had Mr. William Wallace been his great ancestor, he could not have held his position against such odds more firmly. At length the preliminaries of a treaty were proposed by the enemy, the terms of which were that Mr. Wallace should be allowed to consult any records dated before the year one thousand four hundred! This was demured to as utterly useless. Negotiations were then resumed, and the authorities liberally threw in another century, out of the fullness of a respect for the Archbishop, which they had refrained from condescending to express;—Mr. Wallace might consult documents up to the year fifteen hundred.
With this munificent concession, Mr. Wallace was obliged to be satisfied, and proceeded to venture on another stipulation:—
The researches which he had proposed to himself at this Cathedral number two, were elaborate and complicated; they would require such facilities as had been asked on his behalf by the Archbishop. Could he have access to the documents themselves?
The effect which this simple request produced in the office, was prodigious! A small schoolboy who should, at dinner, ask for a piece of the master’s apple-pie; or a drummer on parade, who should solicit from his captain a loan of five shillings, could not produce a more sublime degree of astonishment, than that which glared through the smoke from the faces of the deputy-registrar, the surrogate, the chief clerk, and all the junior clerks, then and there assembled. The effect produced amounted to temporary petrefaction; the principals neither spoke nor moved; the subordinates left off writing and poking the fire. So superlative was the audacity of the request, that it paralyzed the pendulum of that small, rusty, dusty, smoky old ecclesiastical clock, and stopped the works!
Refusal in words was not vouchsafed to Mr. William Wallace; neither did he need that condescension. The silent but expressive pantomine was enough. As the Eastern culprit receives his doom by the speechless gesture of the judge’s hand across his own neck; so Mr. William Wallace fully understood that, access to the record depositories of the province appertaining to Cathedral number two, was nearly equivalent to getting into a freemason’s lodge after it has been “tiled,” or to obtaining admission to St. Paul’s cathedral without two-pence.
He therefore waved as perfectly impossible that item of the treaty. For the public, however, the evidence of that gentleman is hardly necessary to bring them acquainted with the manner in which the trust imposed on the Registrar and his Deputy is performed; for while the Deputy Registrar and Mr. William Wallace are settling their differences over the next clause of their treaty, we shall dip into the reports of the Ecclesiastical Commission issued in 1832, to show what the state of things was at that time; and to any one who can prove that those venerable documents have been by any means rescued from decay since that year, the public will doubtless be much obliged. At page one hundred and seventy of the report, Mr. Edward Protheroe, M.P., states, on oath, that in the instance of every Court he had visited the records suffered more or less from damp and the accumulation of dust and dirt. Then, speaking of the Registry of this same Cathedral number two, he declares its documents to have been in a scandalous state. “I found them,” he continues, “perfectly to accord with the description I had received from various literary and antiquarian characters who had occasion to make searches in the office; and I beg leave to remark that the place must have been always totally inadequate as a place of deposit for the records, both as to space and security.” Some of the writings he found in two small cells, “in a state of the most disgraceful filth;” others in “two apertures in the thick walls, scarcely to be called windows; and the only accommodation for these records are loose wooden shelves, upon which the wills are arranged in bundles, tied up with common strings, and without any covering to them; exposed to the effect of the damp of the weather and the necessary accumulation of dirt.” To these unprotected wills the Deputy Registrar was perhaps wise in his generation to deny access; for Mr. Protheroe says in addition that, “if it was the object of any person to purloin a will, such a thing might be accomplished.” Perfectly and safely accessible copies might be made, at “an expense quite trifling.” What? Mr. Protheroe, would you rob these poor Registrars of a shilling of their hard earnings, just to save landed and other property, of some millions value, from litigation and fraud? Would you discount their twenty thousand a year by even a fraction per cent?