of Lords, by an Act of the reign of Henry VIII. By the end of the reign of Elizabeth, if not before, he had become Her Majesty's ' Principal Secretary of State'.
The 'Secretary of State', and the 'Secretaries of State'.And now I have brought you to a new kind of machinery, but one developed, like all the rest, out of the old models. It has shown itself capable of infinite expansion, and has brought and is bringing into being an enormous number of Public Records, some of which are of the highest interest. The Secretary of State receives and sends out all the official correspondence of the United Kingdom and its dependencies in relation to Home, Colonial, and Foreign Affairs. I say The Secretary of State because, however many Secretaries of State there may be, they collectively exercise the functions of His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State. The number of Secretaries of State has varied at various times, and particular departments have been assigned to particular Secretaries, but any Principal Secretary of State is capable of exercising any of the duties of a Secretary of State, unless specially restricted by Act of Parliament.
The State Paper Office, and other repositories of State Papers.As early as the year 1578 there was a repository for papers concerning matters of 'State and Council' in which all papers of the Secretary of State, when not actually in use, should have been deposited. When this State Paper Office was united with the Public Record Office, it did in fact contain a valuable collection of papers relating to Home, Foreign, and Colonial affairs, though unfortunately some of the earlier Secretaries of State omitted to distinguish between correspondence which belonged to the Crown and correspondence which belonged to themselves. Various documents of importance have consequently been acquired by the British Museum from private hands, and others still remain in the collections of the modern representatives of ancient holders of office.
The more recent documents continue to grow up in