‘as is already done in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain,’ and the grant of a patent to himself for printing it. His main difficulty was with secretaries of state and other officials, who refused to deliver to him public documents to which he considered the state entitled, and with highly placed borrowers who neglected to return the documents they borrowed. Among the latter was Sir Robert Bruce Cotton [q. v.], and in 1615 Wilson protested against Cotton's appointment as keeper of the exchequer records, complaining that Cotton already injured the keepers of the state papers enough by ‘having such things as he hath coningly scraped together,’ and fearing that many exchequer records would find their way into Cotton's private collection. Similarly, when Ralph Starkey [q. v.] acquired the papers of Secretary Davison, Wilson procured a warrant for their seizure, and on 14 Aug. 1619 secured a sackful, containing forty-five bundles of manuscripts (Harl. MS. 286, f. 286). He rendered valuable service in arranging and preserving such documents as he did succeed in acquiring (cf. Cal. State Papers, Ireland, 1603–1606, pref. pp. xx, xxii, xxxv, xli; Edwards, Founders of the British Museum, p. 149).
Wilson's interests were not, however, confined to the state paper office. He was an original subscriber to the Virginia Company (Brown, Genesis, ii. 1054), and kept a keen watch on discoveries in the East Indies, maintaining a correspondence with persons in most quarters of the globe (see Purchas, Pilgrimes, i. 408–13; Cal. State Papers, East Indies, vols. i. and ii. passim). He petitioned for a grant of two thousand acres in Ulster in 1618, and drew up a scheme for the military government of Ireland (Cal. State Papers, Ireland, 1615–25, p. 202; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App. p. 284). He thought he ‘could do better service than in being always buried amongst the state papers;’ his especial ambition was to be made master of requests, an office for which he repeatedly and vainly petitioned the king. He also procured royal letters to the fellows of Trinity Hall and of Gonville and Caius Colleges in favour of his election as master of their respective societies at the next vacancy; but the letters seem never to have been sent, and Wilson remained keeper of the records till his death.
He was, however, knighted at Whitehall on 20 July 1618 (Nichols, Progr. of James I, iii. 487), and in September following was selected for the dishonourable task of worming out of Ralegh sufficient admissions to condemn him. He took up his residence with Ralegh in the Tower on 14 Sept., and was relieved of his charge on 15 Oct. He appears to have entered on his duties with some zest, styling his prisoner the ‘arch-hypocrite’ and ‘arch-impostor,’ and admitting in his reports that he had held out the hope of mercy as a bait; there is, however, no ground for the suggestion thrown out by one of Ralegh's biographers that the real object of Wilson's employment was Ralegh's assassination (Wilson's reports are among the Domestic State Papers, see Cal. 1611–18, pp. 569–92; some are printed in Spedding's Bacon, xiii. 425–7). On Ralegh's death Wilson urged the transference of his manuscripts to the state paper office, and actually seized his ‘mathematical and sea-instruments’ for the navy board, and drew up a catalogue of his books, which he presented to the king.
Wilson was buried at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on 17 July 1629, and on the 31st letters of administration were granted to his widow Margaret, possibly sister of the Peter Mewtys or Mewys whom Wilson succeeded in 1605 as member for Newtown. His only child, a daughter, married, about 1614, Ambrose Randolph, younger son of Thomas Randolph (1523–1590) [q. v.], who was joint-keeper of the records with Wilson from 1614.
Besides the works already mentioned, Wilson compiled a ‘Collection of Divers Matters concerning the Marriages of Princes' Children,’ which he presented on 4 Oct. 1617 to James I; the original is now in British Museum Additional MS. 11576. On 10 Aug. 1616 he sent to Ellesmere a ‘collection of treaties regulating commercial intercourse with the Netherlands’ (Egerton Papers, Camden Soc. p. 476); he drew up a digest of the arrangement of documents in his office (Stowe MS. 548, ff. 2 sqq.), and left unfinished a history of the revenues of the chief powers in Europe (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1623–5, p. 557). Much of his correspondence is preserved among the foreign state papers in the Record Office, and among the yet uncalendared documents at Hatfield.
[Wilson gives an account of his services in his petitions in State Papers, Dom., James I, xciii. 131, and cxxxv. 14, and of his movements in 1601–4, ib. xi. 45. See also Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1600–28, passim, Ireland, 1603–25; Cotton. MS. Calig. E. xi. 81; Lansd. MS. 77, f. 20; Harl. MS. 7000, f. 34; Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. pp. 55, 283, 284, 9th Rep. App. ii. 373; Winwood's Memorials, ii. 45; Nichols's Progr. of James I, i. 188, 246, 475, iii. 487; Brewer's Court and Times of James I; Spedding's Bacon; St. John, Edwards, Cayley, Stebbing, and Hume's Lives of Ralegh; Gardiner's Hist. of England, ii. 143; authorities cited in text.]
