THE PUBLIC RECORDS
AND
THE CONSTITUTION
The History of England, and of England's Records.If I think I have any chance of success in my attempt to impart interest to the subject of my lecture, it is because I hope to persuade you that the subject is not limited to obscure handwriting, to musty and forgotten precedents, or even to a collection of curiosities in the shape of charters, or treaties with attractive seals, or autographs, or specimen letters from persons of note.
I ask you to think of the Records not as documents which have come into existence somehow, and which somehow contain among them certain isolated matters that may give passing pleasure to persons of antiquarian tastes. I ask you to think of them as not being a mere mass of parchments and papers arranged in chronological order, in which the student of any particular period of history may find all that he wants, if only he exhausts all the documents of that period. I ask you to think of them as things which have a close connexion with our everyday life, as things telling of a past which is inextricably interwoven with our present, and telling a true story never to be told without them.
The History of England since the Conquest runs parallel with the History of England's Records. You cannot thoroughly understand either without knowing something of the other.
Statutory definition of theI will first of all give you the statutory definition of Public: 'They shall be taken to mean all rolls,