433.
the Chamber.” 2 Moreover, the careless way in which the records
of the House of Commons were kept had aroused Sir Symonds D 'Ewes and he notes in 1629 “ the beginning of a memorable and great work ” which he afterwards finished and of which he says: " This work contained all the journals both of the Upper House and the House of Commons, of all the Parliaments and Sessions of Parliament during all Queen Elizabeth's reign ; gathered out of the original journal-books of both the Houses, which I had the
most free use of . . . Into which, in the due places (unless in some few particulars where I was fain to guess) I inserted many speeches and other passages, which I had in other private jour nals and manuscripts and in loose papers. I added also many animadversions and elucidations of mine own where occasion served ." 3
How the work of these “ collectors and antiquaries and histor iansof seventeenth century parliaments ,whose researches although
a littleobscured in this latter age do live after them ,” prepared the
way for the official and semi-official legislative reports of to -day has recently been convincingly shown. The editors of Commons Debates for 1629 have by diaries , letters , note -books, and “ parlia mentary compilations;" by news-letters and " separates;" by the Book of Notes and the Clerk 's Book kept in the House of Com
mons; by the Jottings and the finished Journal prepared by the clerk of the Commons; by the various efforts made to meet “ a desire on the part of members to have their speeches circulated
and so to bid for public approval” and on the other hand to ad here to the " old practice of keeping proceedings in Parliament secret,” — by the use of all of these fragmentary parts of the parliamentary report the editors have shown the evolution of the
report as it is available for the first third of the seventeenth century . The study made also shows the existence at this time of the very modern devices of publishing speeches that were sup posed to be delivered in secret; of editing speeches after they were
- E. Porritt, “ The House of Commons and the Press,” The Unreformed
House of Commons, I, 584 -596 .
- The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D ' Ewes, I, 409
410 .
•Wallace Notestein and Frances Helen Relf, Commons Debates for 1029 critically edited and an Introduction dealing with Parliamentary Sources for
the Early Stuarts, Dedication , p
