RECORDS, PUBLIC. Authentic memorials of all kinds, as well public as private, may be considered in one sense as records. Thus the Metopes of the Parthenon are indisputable records of Grecian art ; the journal stamp on a letter is a record that it has passed through the post-offico ; a merchant's letter is a record of his business; and every lord of a manor may keep written records of his courts, as the chancery, the exchequer, and other courts do of their proceedings. But our present purpose is to give some general account of the public records, properly so called, understanding by the term the contents of our Public Record Office.
Records, in the legal settee of the term, are contemporaneous eatements of the proceedings in those higher courts of law which are distinguished as courts of record, written upon rolls of parchment. (Britton, c. 27.) Matters enrolled amongst the proceedings of a court, but not connected with those proceedings, as deeds enrolled, &c., are not records, though they are sometimes in a loose sense said to be " things recorded." In a popular sense the term is applied to all public documents preserved in a recognised repository ; and as such documents cannot•conveniently be removed, or may be wanted in several places at the same time, the courts of law receive in evidence examined copies of the contents of public documents, so preserved, as well as of real records. [Comers ; RECORD ; RECORDER.] The course we propose to take, is to treat that as a record which is thus received in the courts of justice. Tho act, for instance, which abolished Henry VIII.'s court of augmentation (of the revenues obtained from the suppression of the religious houses), declared that its records, rolls, books, papers, and documents, should thenceforth be held to be records of the court of exchequer; and accordingly we have seen many a document, originally a mere private memorandum, elevated to the dignity of a public record, on the sole ground of its official custody, and received in evidence as a record of the Augmenta tion-office. On the other hand, numbers of documents which were
originally compiled as public records, having strayed from their legal repository to the British Museum, have thereby lost their character of authenticity. (` Proceedings of the Privy Council,' vol. v., p. 4, edited by Sir Harris Nicolas.) " Our stores of public records," says Bishop Nicolson, and, we believe, with perfect accuracy, " are justly reckoned to excel in age, beauty, correctness, and authority, whatever the choicest archives abroad can boast of the like sort." (Preface to the ' English Historical Library.') By far the greater part of records are kept as rolls written on skins of parchment and vellum, averaging from nine to fourteen inches wide,* and about throe feet in length. Two modes of fastening the skins or membranes were employed,—one, that of attaching all the tops of the membranes together bookwisc, which is employed in the exchequer and courts of common law ; the other, that of sewing each membrane consecutively, which was adopted in the chancery and wardrobe.
The solution of the reasons for employing two different modes has been thought difficult by writers on the subject. It appears to have been simply a matter of convenience in both cases. The difference in the circumstances under which these rolls were formed, accounts for the variation of make. In the firat case, each inrolmcnt was often begun at one time and completed at another. Space for the completion of the entry must have been left at hazard. Besides, several scribes were certainly engaged in inroliing the proceedings of the courts, and the roll was liable to be unbound, and to receive additional inetnbranca after it had once been made up. In the other case, the business of the chancery being simply registration, the scribe could register the documents before him, with certainty that nothing in future would affect their length, and he was enabled to fill every membrane, and perfect the roll as he proceeded.