APPENDIX
TO PUBLIC
RECORDS.

A.D. 1836.
Part III.
App. I.

SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P.
FOR LISKEARD,

On Moving for a Select Committee of the House of Commons to
Inquire into the Conduct of the Record Commissioners.

HE public records, he presumed it was quite unnecessary for him to remind the House, were, whether they respected private property, or the means of authentic history, of extreme value. Of the first class were, all grants, leases, and conveyances by the Crown to individuals or corporate bodies; of the second, were, ancient records, treaties, and public or national compacts. HowValue of the ever carefully these might be treasured up, they were, of course, of

Speech of
C. Buller.

Public

Records.

Great cost.

perishable materials; and it had been determined by the Legislature that the subject of their preservation, custody, and perpetuation should be referred to Commissioners. The commission had sat now many years, and was established in consequence of an address from the House of Commons in the year 1800. The annual grants to the Commissioners had varied from £5,000 to £20,000. Small as the annual amount was, yet the House would certainly think it a matter worthy of being inquired into, when they found that since the formation of the commission about £400,000 had been voted by Parliament towards its expenditure. But that had not been the sole expense the country had been put to, on account of the public records during that period. The keepers of the principal offices were paid by Government; and it was supposed that, including the expenses of the Irish Commissioners, the whole amount bestowed on the public records, was not

RECORDS.

less than £600,000 or £700,000. Besides this enormous expendi- APPENDIX ture, it now appeared that this commission was actually in debt to TO PUBLIC the amount of £20,000. It was obvious to a common observer A.D. 1836. that a considerable portion of this expense had been unnecessarily, Part III. if not blamably, incurred by the Commissioners, who seemed in App. I. £400,000 most instances to have lost sight of the objects which had occaspent by sioned their appointment. Of one thing they had, however, been Commission. very laudably tenacious; and that was, to take all possible pains Misdeeds. to render themselves generally known to all the countries, and in almost all the languages, of Europe. A portion of the public money entrusted to the Commissioners, had been devoted to publishing in the various languages of Europe, an account of the nature of the commission, and a full detail of the names and titles of the Publish their Commissioners. He held in his hand a Portuguese pamphlet on the subject, in which the names of the Commissioners were given, no doubt in the purest Portuguese. [Laughter.] The honourable member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Wynn) was designated 'O muito nobre Carlos Watkins Williams Wynn.' [Laughter.] The honourable baronet, the member for Oxford, had a most romantic title, 'Sir Roberto Harry Inglis.' [Loud laughter.] That was one of the ways in which the public money was spent-making the style and title of the Commissioners known all over Europe, from Lisbon to Hamburgh. Even the Secretary to the commission is immortalized in the printed proceedings of the Board as 'Viro illustri, excellentissimo, clarissimo, doctissimo C. P. Coopero equiti Anglo.' [Roars of laughter.]

names to

Europe.

objects of

the Com

mission.

"The principal objects of the commission were the care of the records, their preservation, and perpetuation by means of transcription of such as had become nearly defaced by time or accident. How these objects were provided for, he should briefly state to the House. He need scarcely inform the House that the public records were of great importance to suitors in the courts of law and equity, and were also of great public importance, as forming the genuine materials of the history of England. In this point of view he should not of course be otherwise than the advocate of liberal expenditure, provided it were directed, and efficiently directed, to the proper objects. The first great object was, that those records should be kept in a convenient place in security and Security. good arrangement; the next, that there should be proper calendars Arrangeand indexes; the third, that all records which were in any danger of perishing should be transcribed, and, in cases where printing happened to be not too expensive, that such records should be printed. He had every reason to believe that if the Committee were granted him, he would make it appear that the Commissioners had neglected the principal of those duties. It appeared by the last parliamentary returns of the Commissioners' expenditure, that only £1,500 had been spent on what he would call the most im

ment.

Calendars.

APPENDIX
TO PUBLIC
RECORDS.
A.D. 1836.
Part III.
App. I.

Records
scattered

in different parts of London.

Stalactites

found in offices.

Dampness.

Some 650 sacks.

Proper

repository wanted.

portant object for which they were appointed, namely, on the
arrangement of the records. What was the present state of those
important documents? Considering that the object of the com-
mission was the preservation of the records, and the affording easy
accessibility to them, the method in which the records were kept
was perfectly scandalous. They were scattered about in eight or
ten different offices, in different parts of the town. Those at
Somerset-house were in underground vaults, where the light of the
sun never penetrated. Fires were lighted in these vaults for the
purpose of dispelling the damp; and the result was, that the
records were alternately damp and dry, the destructive effects of
which changes he need hardly point out: he feared they might
have operated extensively already. A very picturesque description
had been given in a report of some stalactite found in one of
these vaults by the honourable baronet [Sir R. INGLIS]; stalactites
were interesting objects to the geologist, but he [MR. C. BULLER]
thought a Record-office an inappropriate place for their growth.
[Laughter.] MR. ILLINGWORTH, who was very familiar with these
records and their situation, stated in a letter that he was afraid to
touch them, on account of their dampness, lest he should catch
the rheumatism in his hand. [Laughter.] In these same vaults
the records were placed so high on shelves, some sticking out like
bottles, that a ladder must be obtained to reach them; and then
there was the chance of falling from the top, with the roll upon
the adventurous individual who made the experiment: no very
pleasant predicament. [A laugh.] Surely, nothing could be more
evident than that the public records of a nation ought not to be
left in such circumstances, but should be placed in commodious
and suitable apartments, in accessible situations, and under a
perfect system of arrangement. As to the miscellaneous records
lately at the Mews, and now at Carlton-ride, the method of keep-
ing them was most ridiculous. They did not talk there of books,
and manuscripts, and rolls, like other people; but they described
the records by sacks and bushels. [A laugh.] They would tell
that they had six hundred and fifty sacks of records, contain-
ing eight bushels each. [Laughter.] The commission had begun
some little good here; which, being good, was mysteriously sus-
pended. The papers were sorted by years in sacks; so that, if
you wanted a document for such a year, you went to such a sack.
The records to which he was now alluding had previously been
kept, as the House might remember, in the temporary sheds which
till lately stood in Westminster-hall.

you

"One of the fittest objects of the commission would have been to provide a proper repository for the reception of the records. He had seen a very fair estimate for a building, but no repository had been built. The money spent in temporary buildings and removals would have gone a great way towards realizing this object.

RECORDS.

The sum actually expended in fitting up the vaults of Somerset- APPENDIX house was £16,000; and the various migrations of the records TO PUBLIC from the old buildings in Westminster-hall, to the King's-mews A.D. 1836. and Carlton-terrace, had cost £12,000; so that these two sums, making £28,000, would have formed a fund sufficient to build a very good record-office. [Hear.

Part III.

App. I.

"Another object, of course, of great importance, was, that these records should be safe. Ever since 1732, it had been reported to the House of Commons that there were a brewhouse and washhouse at the back of the Chapter-house, where the records were kept, and by which the safety of the Chapter-house was greatly endangered by fire. In 1800 this brewhouse and this washhouse Danger from were again reported as dangerous. In 1819 this brewhouse and Fire. washhouse again attracted the serious notice of the Commissioners. In 1831 it was thought expedient to send a deputation to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and to request his Majesty's Surveyor-general to report upon the perils of this brewhouse and washhouse [a laugh], and endeavour to get the Dean and Chapter to pull them down. [Laughter.] But the Dean and Chapter asserted the vested rights of the Church, and no redress was obtained against the brewhouse and washhouse. [A laugh.] In 1833 another expedition, headed by the right honourable baronet opposite, was made to the Chapter-house, but the right honourable baronet, desiring not to come into collision with the Church, omitted all mention of the brewhouse and washhouse. [Loud laughter.] And thus the attention of the Commissioners had been constantly directed to this eternal brewhouse and eternal washhouse without any avail. There they still remain as a monument of the inefficiency of the Commissioners, and of the great power and pertina- Power of the city of the Church of this country. [Loud laughter.] It seemed however to him (Mr. C. Buller), that the honourable baronet had not consistently exhibited that attachment to the Church which the world gave him credit for, as in 1833 it was reported, that the records in the Augmentation-office (in which the great bulk of the records relating to the Church were deposited), were in great danger from fire. The praiseworthy efforts of Mr. Protheroe to reform the condition of the Augmentation-office, and especially his representations of the dangers likely to arise from fire, were practically disregarded, though the burning of the Houses of Burning of Parliament,' which occurred since, bore ample testimony to the value of his suggestions. The result of not attending to his advice ment. was, that the records at that period were all thrown out of the windows, to be preserved from the ravages of fire by the mire of Palace-yard, and soaked by water from the fire-mains. He had

As already stated, I was present during the fire on the 16th of October, 1834, and some account of the event

will be found at Vol. I., p. 8. The
reports of details in the newspapers
were inaccurate.

Church.

the Houses

of Parlia

APPENDIX
TO PUBLIC
RECORDS.
A.D. 1836.

Part III.
App. I.

Rats.
Glue.

Jellies.

Records sold.

Heavy fees.

heard that the records made admirable rat-traps. It was astonishing the quantity of remains of rats [a laugh] which were found amongst the records. On one occasion the skeleton of a cat had been found amongst them. [Laughter.] Evidence too appeared that the public records had served a better purpose than rat-traps, The public records had been boiled down for glue, and the cleaner and better sort had been converted into jellies by the confectioners. [Laughter.] He had heard too that the embezzlement of records had been carried to a serious extent, and that at the sale of a deceased virtuoso a lot of this kind fetched above £600. They were also to be found, as matters of course, in curiosity-shops through the town. The disorderly course of keeping the records in large masses scattered on tables, amongst which it was necessary to hunt for any specific document, might perhaps be accounted for, by the knowledge of the fact that the searchers were paid by the time spent in these hunting-matches. [Hear, hear.] An attempt was made to arrange the records in the Augmentationoffice by a late Secretary (Mr. Caley), who bound those of similar sizes together without regard to subject or date-leases, grants, and rentals, all together-of which an index of contents, compiled at the public expense, was kept by the Secretary at Spafields, where it could be consulted on payment of a fee [hear, hear]; but, owing to the imperfection of this arrangement, three days had been frequently spent, with the help of this index, hunting for a single class of documents. This was not at all surprising, for he found one volume labelled 'Rentals,' which contained seventeen sorts of records, yet not a single one of that class. [Hear.]

"The Commissioners were especially expected to report on the subject of fees, a matter of great import, which still lay quite neglected, though Sir Harris Nicolas had, in his valuable work, exposed the enormity of the prevailing practice. It appeared that any one wishing to look at a single record must pay 16s. 8d.; if a transcript were taken, additional fees were required; if a full copy, higher still. A general search cost five guineas; and in the Rolls' Chapel even eight guineas is not an unusual charge. There, they would not allow a copy of part of a document to be made or examined by an applicant. A person wanted a few lines of a particular instrument transcribed, and applied to be permitted to copy them himself. He was told he must, to obtain them, order an office-copy of the entire record, the expense of which would be 140 guineas [hear, hear]; and this abuse was yet unreformed. Again, if a document was required in a court of law, a guinea per day was charged for bringing it from the Tower; if ten records were required at once, ten guineas were charged; and so on. The effect of this might be estimated from the fact that in a single case instituted to try the right to the Barony of Stafford, the charge was eighty guineas. [Hear, hear.] In this case the sum of eighty guineas