PRICELESS DOCUMENTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20709, 6 May 1929, Page 10

PRICELESS DOCUMENTS.

BRITAIN’S STOREHOUSE. Where is the treasure house of British history? asks Barrie Goult, in the Vancouver Sunday Province, and in the following article supplies the answer. The traveller to England often counts 'the visit to the Old Land incomplete if ho fails to visit the British Museum or the Tower of London to curiously examine the relics of a bygone day. The value of these relics as-souvenirs of history would be greatly depleted were it not for the priceless documents -stored in the London Records Office. This museum is a palatial Tudor building, situated- on Chancery lane, not far from Fleet street. It houses many thousands of manuscripts, dating from the time of the Conqueror,' whose notable contribution Was-the Book of Winchester, better known to. students of history as the Domesday Book. | . In 1232, when the Fleet poured its waters Tharaeswards, Henry 111 .sat upon the throne of England.' He built upon the spot where the Records Office now stands, the Chapel of the House of Converts to shelter those members of the Jewry who had embraced the .Christian faith, Edward I expelled the .Jews from the kingdom, and the post of the keeper of the House of Converts became a sinecure—a position much sought after by favourites of the king. ■ Later, in 1377, Edward 111 assigned the house to the keeper of the rolls of Chancery, whose successors held it until 1837, when it was surrendered.' to the Crown. In 1836 a unit of the present Records Office was erected, and in 1895 the crumbling walls of the original House of Converts gave way to the present building, .whose purpose-it is to preserve the benefice of Henry 111. Probably the most valuable document preserved in the Records, Office is the Domesday Book, compiled in 108 a by IV illiam of ; Normandy for fiscal purposes. It is in two. volumes, inscribed in Latin on parchment, and is still in wonderful condition. Its covers, too, are interesting, relics.. They are made of ifood and coveredWitli leather, but are not, according to. authorities, contemporary with the “ Book.” Sir Henry Lytc, who-looks afterthe documents, quotes in proof of his assertion, an old manuscript .dated 1320, recording the payment of a certain sum lb “William le Bookbyndere of London for the bynding and repaire of the Bok of Domesday, in which are contd. the Countys of Norfolk, Essex and Suffolk.” ■ Curiously enough, the original Magna Carta was not preserved. Four copies of the relic are still extant, however, and can be seen- in Lincoln. Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, and in the British Museum, which has two copies. : Other interesting manuscripts include a' petition from. Cardinal Wolsey to Henry VIII. “-The King’s pore heyy and .vuetchyd priest” calls daily ‘'for.grace mercy remissyon and forgiveness.” It it dated October S, ; 1529, and signed “Your Grace’s most prostrat poor chapleyn creature and bedesman, T. Carditis Ebor Miserimus.”- An earlier manuscript, dated .at St Peter’s, Rome, 1523, is the Papal Bull.of Clement VII, confirming the title of “ Defender of the Faith ” conferred upon Henry by Pope Leo X. The use or the title was warranted by a Special Act of Parliament in 1544. A romance of Queen Elizabeth is brought to light in a letter from Dudley, Earl of Leicester, dated August 29, 1588. He writes;— .. . “I most humbly beseech your Majestic to pardon your i.poore servant to be thus bold in sending to know how.my gratious ladie doth and what ease of her- late paine she finds, being the chiefest thing in the world. I .doe pray for, for hif to have good health and long life. For my own poore., case I continynew still your medicyn- Thus hoping to find a- perfect cure at_ Bath I kiss, your foote.” ’ The letter is endorsed— by' the letter.” "Dud%:pbssed away six days after, he • penned’■ the epistle.. ’ , ", - . -The illustrious name of Shakespeare is , mentioned.. in-. a memorandum from James I to Lord Cecil warranting;'the issue of letters patent, authorising “The King’s servants, Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Hemminnes and the rest of their associates, to play comedies, tragedies, morallcs, pastorelles, stage plaies- and-the like for "the recreation of the King’s loving subjects and his own pleasure, i .” . , The pi°t of • Guido Fawkes to assassinate James I is illustrated by an anonymous letter ’addressed to -Lord Monteagle, advising him “to devise some excuse for the shift of his attendance at this Parliament, for God. and man hath concurred to. punish -the wickedness ,of this .time ... . they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament and yet, they shall not see who hurts them.” Beside this letter there is another document, signed by Fawkes in November, 1605, swearing that’ “tha plotte was to blow up the King with all the nobility about him in Parliament.” The signature, a queer scrawl, was said to hsve been wrung from the unfortunate man after torture. - American - visitors to London - are usually greatly interested in what is known as the Olive Branch petition. Thig document records the last efforts of tha colonists to avoid a rupture with the Motherland in 1773. Addressed to George 111, it is signed by representatives of the, colonies, .among whom ar« Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. It i B certain that tlia colonists did not wish the effusion of blood, although most of the signatories to. the petition later appended „ their names to the Declaration of Independencc. 1 _ There, are ninny souvenirs of the Napoleonic Wars, the most interestin' 7 ’ being a series of letters from Lord Nelson. There was a decided change in ms handwriting caused by the loss of his right-arm in action. The log of the Victory, signed by Captain Hardy (October 22, 1805)", reports that “Lord Nelson was wounded in the shoulder at Llo p.m. and a victory having Been reported to him at. 4.30, he then died of his wound.” ■' The Belgian Treaty of. 1839—“ the scrap of paper” whose infringement wag one of the causes of.the Great War i* another document of more than passing interest to the observer. It is expected that" the results of strife in the form of a copy of the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Locarno will, in" the near future, be placed beside this document that brought the British Empire into the 1914 cataclysm.