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
