314 R E D R E D "buried together in one confused chaos, dust, and filth in the dark corners of Csesar's chajx?! iu the White Tower." He employ, 1 soldiers and women to remove and cleanse them, "who soon grow- ing weary of this noisome work left them as foul, dusty, and nasty as they found them." He then begged the aid of the clerks of his department, but these officials, " being unwilling to touch the records for fear of fouling their fingers, spoiling their clothes, endangering their eyesight and healths by their cankerous dust and evil scent," declined the task. To the energetic Prynne the labour of methodizing the papers iu his charge seemed hopeless ; he saw them in confused heaps hidden here and scattered there and destitute of anything approaching to an index. He lamented that it would require "Briareus his hundred hands, Argus his hundred eyes, and Nestor's centuries of years to marshal them into distinct files and make exact alphabetical tables of the several things, names, places, comprised in them." Still nothing was done to remedy the evils complained of. Addresses were presented to parliament upon the subject ; reports were drawn up and committees frequently sat ; but it was not until the beginning of this century that a com- plete and satisfactory investigation of the public records was entered into. In the summer of 1800 a very able report upon the state of the archives was drawn up; and a commission was appointed "to methodize, regulate, and digest the records." But the commission directed its attention exclusively to the printing of antiquarian matter, and nothing was attempted for the better preservation of the archives. Dissatisfaction arose, and a select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the working of the Record Commission. The result of its sittings was the passing of a special Act of Parliament, which placed the public records in the custody and under the superintendence of the master of the rolls for the time being, and directed the treasury forthwith to provide a suitable building. In 1851 the foundations of the present Record Repository were laid, and seven years afterwards the public records were removed from their different places of deposit and housed iu their new quarters, where they are now most carefully preserved. The history of the custody of the state papers which run from Henry VIII. to the present time is but a repetition of the neglect and ill-treatment which the public records had to endure. When they first began to be preserved they were locked up in chests, then confined in the larder of the privy seal, then lodged in the tower over the gateway of Whitehall Palace, then transferred to the upper floor of the lord chamberlain's lodgings, then despatched to an old house in Scotland Yard ; and it was not till 1833 that the State Paper Office in St James's Park was specially erected for their accommodation. Twenty years later it was deemed advisable by the Government of the day to amalgamate the state papers with the public records ; the State Paper Office was therefore pulled down and its contents transferred to the repository in Fetter Lane. On making a careful examination of the state of the documents, it was found that many of them had "greatly suffered from vermin and wet," and that the list of those which had been stolen or had strayed from the collection was no small one. Theft and destruction for private ends appear to have been the two chief agents of mis- chief. During the reign of Henry VIII. many of the despatches were appropriated by Lord St Albans and Lord Cherbury, to whom they were entrusted. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth most of the private business papers of Her Majesty, especially her letters on matters of secret importance, came into the hands of the earl of Leicester and finally into the possession of his secretary and his descendants; and, "though they were ultimately recovered, a great part had perished by time and the distraction of the wars, &c. ; being left in England during the Rebellion, many had been abused to the meanest purposes. ' Upon the outbreak of the Civil War the king's papers from the time he was in the north till the surrender of Oxford were designedly burned; whilst "a fair cabinet of the king's, full of papers of a very secret nature, which had been left by the king upon his retirement to the Scots, amongst which were thought to be all the queen's letters to the king and things of a very mysterious nature," was also de- stroyed. Iu the turbulent days of the Commonwealth Bradshaw, in his capacity as president of the council, managed to obtain possession ' ' of divers books, treaties, papers, and records of state, " some of which, in spite of all the efforts of Charles II., were not regained. At the Restoration "all the paprs of state during the time of the usurpation remained in Thurloe's hands, and Sir Samuel Morland advised a great minister to have them seized, being then privately in four great deal desks ; but for reasons left to be judged, that minister delayed to order it, and Thurloe had time to burn them that would have hanged a great many, and he certainly did burn them except some principal ones culled out by himself." During the reign of Charles II. various papers were sent out of the country to The Hague and Sweden for the convenience of ambassadors, many of which were never returned. Indeed so care- lessly did ministers watch their own documents that a treaty con- cluded with Holland in 1654 was bought at an auction, and the original treaty with Portugal in the same year was found on a stall in the street. Within almost a comparatively recent date there were instances of documents sent out of the State Paper Offic which were never returned, a fact which may account for many of the purely official papers to be found in the manuscript collec- tions of private individuals. In spite, however, of past thefts and negligence, the state papers, like the public records, are a most wealthy and valuable collection. Their contents were considered so important that at one time it was a matter of the greatest difficulty for any outsider to obtain access to them. The keeper of the state papers was bound by oath "to let no man see anything in the office of His Majesty's papers without a warrant from the king." He was also "tied by a strict oath and by His Majesty's commands to deliver nothing out of the oilice unless to the lords and others of the council." During the whole history of the State Paper Office the keeper never had power to grant on his own authority leave to consult the papers ; such permission could only be obtained from the secretary of state, to whose office the documents belonged. Among the persons fortunate enough to have this favour accorded them, we find that in 1670 Evelyn was lent several documents which related to Holland ; that in 1679 Dr Gilbert Burnet was permitted by warrant " from time to time to have the sight and use of such papers and books as he shall think may give him information and help in finishing his history of the Reformation of the Church of England"; and that in the same year Prince Rupert made a personal request to the king on behalf of Roger L'Estrange, who was writing a history of the Civil War in England. In later times permission was more freely given, though the "library of MSS. " was still most vigilantly guarded, and applications were more often refused than granted. As an instance of the strictness with which the state papers were preserved, we find that as late as 1775 Lord North, though he was then prime minister, had to beg the king's permission to have free access to all correspondence in the Paper Office; and that in 1780 it was necessary for the Ordnance Office to have permission to search the Paper Office for any documents that regarded their depart- ment. These restrictions have now been entirely removed, thanks to the late Lord Romilly ; when he was master of the rolls, the public records were thrown open to the public free of all the charges that were formerly demanded for investigation, whilst the same liberal course has been pursued with regard to the state papers down to the year 1760. After that date special permission has to be obtained. Calendars and indexes of the public records are annually published in the appendices to the reports of the deputy- keeper of the public records. Large volumes entitled Calendars of State Papers consisting of condensations of the documents in the Public Record Office and elsewhere from the days of Henry VIII. to the 18th century are now in course of publication. See Sir T. D. Hardy, Introduction to the Close and Patent Rolls ; Fine Rolls, ed. C. Roberts ; Feet of Fines, ed. Joseph Hunter ; Thomas Madox, History and Antiquities of the Exchequer; Great Roll of the Pipe, ed. Joseph Hunter; the Record Report of 1800; Noel Sainsbury, "The State Paper Office," in the deputy-keeper's Thirtieth Report (Appendix) ; A. C. Ewald, Our J'ullic Records. (A. C. E.) REDBREAST, the name of a bird which from its manners, no less familiar than engaging, has for a long while been so great a favourite among all classes in Great Britain as to have gained an almost sacred character. The pleasing colour of its plumage one striking feature of which is expressed by its ancient name its sprightly air, full dark eye, enquiring and sagacious demeanour, added to the trust in man it often exhibits, but, above all, the cheerful sweetness of its song, even "when winter chills the day" and scarce another bird is heard combine to produce the effects just mentioned, so that among many European nations it has earned some endearing name, though there is no country in which " Robin Redbreast " is held so highly in regard as England. 1 Well known as is its appearance and voice throughout the whole year in the British Islands, there are not many birds which to the attentive observer betray more unmistakably the influence of the migratory impulse ; but somewhat close scrutiny is needed to reveal this fact. In the months of July and August the hedgerows of the southern counties of Eng- land may be seen to be beset with Redbreasts, not in flocks as is the case with so many other species, but each indi- 1 English colonists in far distant lands have gladly applied the common nickname of the Redbreast to other birds that are not im- mediately allied to it. The ordinary "Robin " of North America is a Thrush, Turdus migratorius (see FIELDFARE, vol. ix. p. 142), and one of the Bluebirds of the same continent, the Sialia sialis of most orni- thologists, is in ordinary speech the Blue " Robin " ; while the same familiar name is given in the various communities of Australasia to several species of the genus Petrceca, though some have no red breast.
